The Secret Santa Caper
by zenfrodo
Summary: The Secret Santa draw at school has left Joe with a big problem...and when his Secret Santa gives him a mystery to solve, the Hardy brothers find themselves trying to outwit a clever, dangerous thief who will stop at nothing to silence those who stand in his way...
1. Lessons

**_The Usual Fanfic Disclaimer:_**

**_Merry Yule! Here's a fun little tale that popped in as I've been finishing "The SF Vampire"..._**

**_The characters of Frank & Joe Hardy, their dad Fenton and Aunt Gertrude all belong to the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Those characters as portrayed here are based on the 1970s TV show, "The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries", created by Glen A. Larson and starring Parker Stevenson & Shaun Cassidy as Frank and Joe, with shades of the 1950s Disney "Hardy Boys" serial, "The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure". The wonderfully out-there Sharon Anderson is taken from the '70s episode "The Creatures Who Came On Sunday", original screenplay by David Balkan.  
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**_Quick tour for those not familiar with the show: Laura Hardy is dead (both in '70s show & Disney), Aunt Gertrude lives with the family to help raise the boys (both in '70s & Disney), Bayport is in Massachusetts, and the supernatural is accepted as real (at least, it's real for Joe!). While Callie Shaw and Chet Morton are in the '70s show, Chet's sister Iola isn't; she's never mentioned, and Joe never dated her. However, Iola IS in the Disney serial, and that's the depiction I'm following here.  
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**_This is a prequel to "Voodoo Doll" and a sequel to "In Excelsis Deo". It's set in 1971, before a lot of the technology we have now existed — so if you think "Well, why didn't they just…?", it's because it didn't exist back then.  
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_**Note: I've gotten a few PMs about Kris's childhood being "extreme" — folks, what I describe is *light*. Check Amazon for a book called "To Train Up A Child" by the Pearls, and weep — yes, seriously, someone wrote a book advocating child abuse as the best "Christian" way to discipline a child, with techniques so harsh that the book's been linked to several child murders.**  
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_December 1971, Bayport MA_

"But, _shimá, _I don't even _like_ her!"

"You know, I believe that may be the point," Mar said, as she peeled another onion.

Kris Mountainhawk sat at the kitchen table, helping her adopted mother Mar chop onions, carrots and parsnips for the venison roast. School that day had been an absolute disaster; she was eleven, almost twelve, but everyone treated her like a little ignorant _kid_. The teachers had made everyone pull names out of a basket for something called "Secret Santa", something even more baffling to Kris than the whole idea of Christmas was. They had to do a lottery to decide who to be nice to? Miss Hawkins had explained it — in Kris's case, three times, with everyone laughing behind her back — but Kris still didn't get the reasoning.

If someone hated you the rest of the year, a couple weeks in December wouldn't change that. Her Gift _knew _that; the couple times she'd cautiously lowered her mental-shields in class had proven that much.

"But they know I don't know all that stuff," Kris said morosely. "None of the other kids like me. No one's gonna want me being nice to them." She chopped at the big carrot with a bit more force than was necessary; the end flipped off the cutting board. "I don't like them, and they don't like me."

She'd hoped to draw Joe's name — she was good friends and official-kid-sister to the Hardy brothers, both Joe and his older brother Frank, who lived next door. Joe would understand if she didn't get it right. He'd tease her, but it'd be fun teasing, not mean, and Frank was always patient with explaining things. But to make her get presents and goodies for someone she barely knew and didn't like? And to force someone else do the same for her? It wouldn't make them magically like her.

Worse, she'd drawn the name of someone even lower on the school totem pole than she was. Kris was well aware that she was considered a bottom-scraper, an ugly little mousy blonde dummy, someone the other kids teased and laughed at — the mean kind, the stuff that didn't stop. She'd started school late, shortly after she and Mar had moved to Bayport; the other kids had scared her at first, all noise, laughter, roughhousing, and she'd kept mostly to herself.

Bad enough being outside of the established friendships, but worse, because of her size (runty), undocumented age (her original parents had never registered a birth certificate), and the fact that those parents had never sent her to school, she'd initially been placed in the 3rd grade — _third_, as if she'd been a _baby._ Even after Mar's adoption was finalized and Kris had been declared eleven by the courts just before Christmas last year, the school had resisted moving her up with kids her age.

This year, after a lot of special tutoring and arguments from Mar, Kris had been grudgingly allowed to move to the 6th grade — Joe's class — but none of the kids let her forget that she was a _dummy._ Especially since she still had sessions in the Special Ed trailer to catch up.

But Kris had drawn Sharon Anderson's name from the basket. _Sharon._ Kris was just a dummy, but Sharon was an out-and-out _weirdo._ That was what all the other kids said, anyway. Kris didn't know why; none of them would talk to her long enough to find out.

"Consider it a learning experience, _shiché'é,_" Mar said calmly. "Go cut some rosemary and thyme, if you would, please. Just a handful."

No use arguing, then. Kris sighed as she pushed up from the table and went into the back sunroom — Mar had converted part of the patio into an add-on room of big windows, walls and ceiling, a room that always smelled of sun, warm earth, and herbs. Mar being the cool adult of the neighborhood helped Kris's status a little, not much; Mar was an honest-to-goodness real Navajo Indian, originally from the Arizona reservation. She taught karate at the Y and would've volunteered to be the Girl Scout leader for the middle school, if the other mothers hadn't protested that she taught "unfeminine" things like archery and wilderness survival.

"Hey, Tagalong."

Kris looked up from the herb pots. Joe Hardy stood in the doorway of the sunroom, grinning at her. Damp with snow, his shaggy gold-brown hair hung in his hazel eyes; his red puffy-nylon Red Sox coat was unzipped, showing his usual red flannel shirt, and both were an inch or so short of his wrist.

"Aunt Gertrude sent me over to get some fresh mint." Joe inhaled deeply. "I love how it smells in here. She's almost got Dad talked into doing this at our house." Then he stopped. "You've got Christmas rose!"

The star-shaped white flowers had bloomed yesterday; Mar had them along the window-wall, where they'd get the most sun. Kris nodded. "Mar likes them a lot. She hates poinsettia. She says something that needs that much work to bloom shouldn't be alive in the winter."

Joe had gone over to the plants, touching the white blooms reverently. "Mom loved it, too. It was her favorite flower. You know the story?"

"There's a story?" Kris loved fairy tales of all kinds, even more so if they involved legends and myths around objects and plants. It made the stories more real, more solid, more grounded.

"Uh-huh. Mom said angels make it grow. A little shepherd girl didn't have a present to give baby Jesus, and she started crying, and the flowers grew where her tears fell."

Kris looked down at the rosemary pot. She could hear what Papa would've said about that story: heathen, pagan, and blasphemous. If it wasn't in the Bible, it wasn't true, according to Papa. Everything that people called "Christmas", Papa had said (usually with a slap), was really old pagan devil-worship and that people were too sinful to follow the Truth.

Joe was shaking his head, his smile sad; his mother had died before Kris had moved out here. "I tried telling Mom that flowers grew from seeds, and she just laughed and said I'd understand when I was bigger."

Maybe the story wasn't really about Jesus, originally, but this was Joe; he wouldn't know. Stories only interested him if it involved crime, mysteries, or other things suitably gory. Kris would look it up at the library later. Or maybe Mar's new encyclopedias had the story. "Well, Mar got these from Cohen's Greenhouse. Unless angels pooped out the manure for the fertilizer."

"_Kris!_" Joe whooped into laughter. "Angel poop. Wait 'til I tell Frank!"

"Kris?" Mar called, from the kitchen. "I need those herbs, please."

Oh. Yeah. Kris cut a quick handful of the rosemary and thyme sprigs, as Joe pinched off a double-handful of mint; there was always too much mint. "The Rose'll bloom most of the winter," Kris said, as they went back to the kitchen. "Maybe Mar can make a cutting for you, and you can have one for yourself."

Joe shook his head. "I'd just kill it. I can't even keep a cactus alive. Who'd you get for Secret Santa?"

They weren't supposed to tell, but it wasn't like she'd drawn his name. "Sharon Anderson."

He blinked. "Oh _man._ Really?" Then Joe was grinning again. "She'll be easy. Glue together a bunch of rocks and say a UFO left it in the backyard."

Kris looked at him, unsure if he was teasing. "What about you?"

"Ain't telling." Joe stuck his tongue out at her. "We're not supposed to tell, remember? And you told! You told!"

"So you're really saying you got _me,"_ Kris retorted, as she handed the herbs to Mar. But when Joe didn't answer and only snatched up two cookies from the basket on the counter, Kris got suspicious. "You did? You got my name? _Joe…! _ Don't look at me like that! Did you really get me?"

"Not telling!" He stuck his tongue out again and ran out the door. That was answer in and of itself, and Kris just stared after him.

"That boy," Mar said, smiling and shaking her head. "Only two speeds, fast forward and face down in the dirt, I swear."

"Mar, he got _me _for Secret Santa!" They weren't supposed to tell, but a lot of the others had anyway; Kris had seen Beverly's clique in Frank's class giggling over their slips of paper and making googly-eyes at the boys. Not that the boys in question noticed.

Mar raised an eyebrow. "So?"

"But that means I need to —"

"No," Mar cut her off. "You do _not_ do anything special_._ That's not the point of it, if I understood your teacher's letter right. You focus on who _you_ drew, not on who you wanted to draw. You do for Joe what you were going to do anyway for Christmas, just as you're doing for Frank."

That wouldn't stop anyone else, Kris was certain. "But I only got Sharon Anderson. She's weird. She's won't care."

Mar looked at her.

Kris swallowed the rest. Uh-oh.

"You mean," Mar said evenly, "just as whoever got _you_ might be going, 'I only got Kris Mountainhawk, she's _weird, _let's ignore her.' You're saying _you _won't care?"

"That's not fair. That's not the same!"

"It is." Mar stared down at her. "The only difference is that it's you on the receiving end."

Kris looked down at the table.

"I expected better of you, little squirrel," Mar said quietly. "I didn't think you'd want to hurt someone like that." She picked up another onion. "I wonder. Did your original parents call you weird, too? I doubt they cared what you thought."

Eyes burning, Kris said nothing, only pushed herself away from the table and left the kitchen, went up to her bedroom and slammed the door. That hadn't been fair. She wasn't anything like her original parents. She wasn't. She wouldn't be.

All this, over some stupid thing the teachers had thought up. The whole Christmas gift-giving & trees & lights stuff was crazy to begin with: why a special day to give gifts? And why was it so important that you give gifts _now?_ All the trees and lights were pretty and everything, but why put up all that just for one day to give gifts? None of it had anything to do with Jesus. Even Mar hadn't been able to explain it in any way that made sense.

But this — this Secret Santa plot just bordered on _insane._

But crazy or not, Kris wanted to do something special for both Joe and Frank. They were her only real friends out here. Well, her only real friends her age, anyway; Joshua was much older and had gone to Vietnam. She hadn't seen him since she'd moved out here, and Mar had explained that any gifts for him were best limited to cookies and candy to share with his unit. And Frank and Joe's circle didn't really count. Kris was okay with most of them, but they only let her tag along because of Frank and Joe. Even Callie, who was nice to everybody, never invited Kris to any of the parties or sleepovers that the girls at school had.

Mama and Papa had never let her have friends. They'd kept her home. They'd never had anyone over. She'd gotten beaten whenever they'd discovered her playing with other kids…and they'd scared those other kids so badly that none of them ever came back.

Frank and Joe knew about her original parents and why Kris had run away. They understood all the troubles she was having, and they'd never laughed, they'd never teased — well, except in a fun way that didn't hurt — they'd never called her names. They'd just decided that she needed a couple 'big brothers' to help her, and had adopted her last Christmas — notarized certificate and _everything!_

Here Joe was supposed to spend the next couple weeks doing extra special things for her on account of some dumb lottery at school, and she wasn't supposed to reciprocate, because she'd drawn someone different?

No, no, _no._ Not going to happen….


	2. Dealing

**_A/N: Yes, two chapters posted today, to hold you over until after Christmas! Enjoy!_**

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School before Christmas was _hard._ Joe loved it, though. This year, the teachers at Bayport Middle School were trying to make it fun, to take everyone's minds off Vietnam — too many older brothers had been selected in the draft, too many of Bayport's young men had gone overseas, with the news showing too many pictures in gruesome detail. So each classroom had a real pine tree, and the teachers had all the kids making decorations: salt-dough ornaments to hang on the Christmas trees, construction paper chains and cut-paper snowflakes, styrofoam balls with sequins pinned to them, Fruit Loops-and-popcorn garlands strung on the bushes outside, oranges pierced with cloves and rolled in nutmeg. When they weren't making decorations, all the lessons were Christmas-related, even Mr. Mack's science class.

Even better, fat Miss Callahan had asked Joe if he'd sing some solo parts for the Christmas concert this year, and his Boy Scout troupe was going caroling up in Boston this weekend…

But this 'Secret Santa' thing…Joe scowled. It wasn't just Miss Hawkins's class. All the teachers were in on it, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. He'd heard Frank's best friend, Phil Cohen, grousing about it — Phil was Jewish, and while Phil joined in all the parties with his friends, his folks didn't celebrate Christmas. Phil himself didn't mind the Secret Santa, but his parents did, and they (along with Bayport's Jewish community) were angry over their children being required to follow Christian traditions at school.

"You look like you ate a worm," Frank sat down next to his brother and handed him the apple from his lunch bag. "The Secret Santa thing?"

Frank was a year older, and while he and Joe shared the same gold-brown hair (Frank's more on the brown side, Joe's more on the gold), Frank's eyes were bright blue — Mom's eyes, Dad said. Frank was bigger and smarter and better at everything, mostly, while Joe ran towards the slender side, lean and quick, and only really excelled at science and music.

Wordlessly, Joe handed him the slip of paper. He'd drawn Kris's name from the basket.

Frank grinned. "Lucky. That makes it _easy."_

"That's not the _point,"_ Joe said, scowling again. "Miss Hawkins said it's to get us to do nice things for other people. Tag's _already_ my friend. It's not fair if I give her double presents and no one else."

"Huh. That makes sense, I guess." Frank chewed on his bologna sandwich a moment. "Some of the girls in my class were trading names around."

That hadn't seemed right to Joe, either. "Yeah. They were doing that in mine, too." He made a face. "Iola was trying to find out who had me."

"Poor little brother," Frank said, grinning again. "The girls are chasing you already."

"I'm glad you find it so hysterical," Joe said sourly. "But I don't want to trade Tag's name to someone who's just going to ignore her." He'd asked Kris who she'd gotten, thinking to maybe trade Kris's name to that person, but he wasn't sure Sharon was a good idea. Sharon was _weird, _even weirder than Kris tended to be.

Thanks to her original parents, Kris didn't have much of a solid grip on reality. She loved fairy tales and ghost stories and acted as if they were real, though she didn't care if no one else believed it. But Sharon _did, _and got upset if anyone acted skeptical. Kris really didn't need someone even more disconnected from reality; she had enough problems with that on her own.

Still…Sharon wasn't mean. Just weird.

Joe was also certain that Miss Hawkins hadn't meant for two people to get each others' names. Though it wasn't like the teacher had any control over who drew what from the basket.

But he didn't like how Kris had no other real friends, other than him and Frank. He liked her a lot, but sometimes he just wanted to go do boy stuff. She needed a girl best friend so she could do whatever girls did without boys around. Him being her Secret Santa wouldn't help that, at all. No, he had to find someone else.

Joe saw Sharon sitting by herself in the corner of the cafeteria, and quickly looked around — Kris nowhere to be seen, good. "Save my spot," he said to Frank, and threaded his way through the cafeteria and slid in next to Sharon. "Hey,."

She looked up. Her eyes were huge; combined with her short, wavy white-blonde hair, she looked like a live Kewpie doll.

"Look, I know we're not really friends and everything," Joe said, "but I need a favor. Would you trade Secret Santas with me?"

Still that wide-eyed stare. It was unnerving.

"If you don't want to, that's okay," Joe said. "But I really, really need to trade."

"Is this a joke?" Sharon said. "I don't like jokes. You people get mean with them."

Joe shifted, uncomfortable. He rarely spoke to Sharon, and then only things like "Pass this note to Tony." She just wasn't someone it was good to be seen talking to; he could already see his classmates watching them, poking each other, and pointing. "But I haven't been mean to you."

She looked away.

"Please, Sharon? It's not a joke, honest. Cross my heart."

"It's someone you don't like, isn't it? You don't like them, so you want the weirdo to take them."

Ouch. "No. It's just…" Joe looked around again. No sign of the tagalong, but he still lowered his voice. "It's Kris. That's who I got. She lives next door to me and she's like me and Frank's sister. I've already got stuff for her for Christmas. It's not fair for me to get her stuff twice. Please?"

Well, that got a return to the wide-eyed stare.

"She really likes fairy tales and spooky stuff," Joe said. "All kinds of weird things. Just like you do. So you got that in common."

"You want the two weirdos together, that's what you really mean," Sharon said.

Sharon could be uncomfortably blunt. Joe shook his head.

"I don't like it when people lie," Sharon said, looking away again. "I don't like being tricked. And I really don't like being part of tricking someone else."

"It's not," Joe said. "I'm not lying. It's just like I said. And I know you wouldn't be mean to her."

Sharon turned red, bent her head, mumbled something.

"Please, Sharon?" Joe wheedled. Another idea struck. "I can help you with ideas. I mean, I'm already friends with her and I know what she likes. Please? Please?"

She raised her head. "I said I'll think about it. I'll let you know after school."

With that, she got up and took her tray to the clean-up window.

Joe sighed. Maybe he could ask Tony Prito.

But Tony had gotten Wendy and he didn't want to trade; Wendy babysat for his little sister. Joe mulled it over through the rest of his classes, trying to decide if any of their classmates would be nice to Kris, or at least wouldn't ignore her. He saw Sharon talking to Iola: probably checking his story, since Iola's brother Chet was his and Frank's best friend. Joe hoped, anyway. He was out of options.

Iola was out. She wouldn't be mean, but she seemed determined to get Joe's name. Huh…maybe he could work that to his advantage. Maybe he could wheedle a favor out of her if he offered to take her to a movie or something.

But that idea didn't sit right. Bribing someone to be Kris's Secret Santa — if Kris found out that Joe had to pay someone to do it, no matter how innocent it was…and Iola was a bit of a blabbermouth…

He wouldn't have worried so much about it, but given Kris's background — last year, she hadn't even known what _snow_ was_,_ and the whole idea of Christmas being fun had completely baffled her — he wanted this to be fun for her, too. But when the last bell rang, and Sharon still hadn't approached him, Joe resigned himself to the inevitable. He'd just have to deal with it himself and explain everything to his other friends so they wouldn't think he was stiffing them.

Just as he was putting his things away in his locker and stuffing his book bag with what he needed for homework, Sharon came up to him.

"Here." Sharon handed him a slip of paper. "I'll do it. That's mine."

Relieved, Joe beamed. "Wow, Sharon — thank you, _thank you. _ You're the boss. You're totally _killer._ I owe you big."

Blushing, she ducked her head. "It's okay. You're not playing a joke. Everyone says you don't lie. Iola said Kris calls you and Frank her 'big brothers'." Sharon cocked her head. "Did you really adopt her?"

Joe nodded. "It was our birthday gift to her last year. We got Dad to notarize the certificate and I put all our fingerprints on it, so it's legal and everything, kinda."

"I wish someone would adopt me," Sharon said quietly, and turned to go.

"Hey, wait a minute." Joe scribbled a set of numbers on the slip of paper with Kris's name. "Here. That's her locker combination. In case you need to get sneaky."

That got him a really weird look. "You have her locker combination?"

"Uh-huh," Joe said. "She has mine, too." He lowered his voice. "She has problems with Angie's crowd. Me and Frank let her keep her books in our lockers, and we check hers for booby traps before she gets in. Actually…" He scrawled a second set of numbers under the first. "That's mine. That might be better to use."

Beet-red again, Sharon only mumbled something and left. Only then did Joe look at her slip of paper, his new Secret Santa, and groaned.

_Iola Morton._


	3. Friendship

**_A/N: thanks to max2013, leyapearl, & the guest for the reviews! (Folks that want the story, skip the italics!) To answer another guest review that wasn't a review, but a question: Kris isn't me. She's based on the daughter of one of our Dungeons & Dragon gaming group. The guy was going through a divorce, and would bring the kid to our weekly games; he claimed his wife's boyfriend was abusing the kid, and he was fighting for custody (this was late '80s, when mothers were almost automatically given custody). For some reason, the child took to me (I was the only other woman in the group) and loved it when I'd color with her or let her read my Narnia books, and we'd include her in the game so that she didn't feel left out when the adults were playing - she played a little fairy dragon "Sid" who caused all kinds of fun trouble. I really liked her, and her dad would always joke about leaving her with us permanently, since she behaved so good when she was there. Life went on, me & my husband moved away, we lost touch with several of the group including the guy & his daughter, and a few years later, we heard second- and third-hand from others in the group that it'd come out that our "friend" was the one actually abusing the child..._**

**_I wish I'd kidnapped her then. I wish I'd just run away with her and taken the consequences. But...I didn't. Kris is my way of "adopting" that child in hindsight. A poor, sad solution._**

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The hardest part of the whole Secret Santa business…of this whole weird thing called _Christmas shopping: _managing to get stuff without the other person being aware of it.

Bayport was a small town. Kris was finding out just how small it was. She kept seeing kids from school no matter what store she went into, and none of them were good at keeping their mouths shut. While Kris was good at staying unnoticed, the store clerks inevitably knew she was Mar's "little adopted foundling" and would try to joke and chat with her to get her to smile. On top of that, any adult standing behind Kris in line would inevitably be related to her classmates, or would know the Hardys or Mar, and so would also know her. At that point, Kris would be lucky to escape the store without getting her cheeks pinched with an accompanying "_You're such a cute little elf!"_

Didn't _anyone_ here know what elves were really like?

Then again, the pink puffy-nylon coat and red wooly bobble hat probably didn't help. Maybe she should ask Mar for a new coat: Mar had asked her what she wanted for Christmas, which was even more baffling. Kris already had everything she could ever possibly want: a real mother, three wonderful big brothers (one of whom was in the Army in some strange jungle-land being a _hero!)_, a warm room of her own with a door she could lock, real meals, no one beating the crap out of her…

And wasn't the whole idea to surprise the other person? So why ask her what she wanted? Wouldn't that spoil the surprise? But Mar had just laughed when Kris asked and hugged her in that warm "mother" way that told Kris she'd said something funny-and-endearing-to-grownups without meaning to.

Something else that made no sense in this whole mess of nonsense.

Kris sighed, scowling at the mess of shoppers, seeing another cluster of classmates across the way. Hard enough trying to find gifts for her big brothers — something that wasn't mass-produced and cheap-looking, something special — without everyone in Bayport gossiping about it.

Harder still, finding something extra special for Joe. She was about ready to give up.

Snow had fallen again last night, coating the colored lights and decorations and dusting all the evergreen wreaths and garlands in ice and white. Town center was Bayport's newly-refurbished historic district: old-fashioned brick-and-brownstone shops on cobbled streets, much the same as it'd been in Bayport's whaling days. City Council had turned it into a pedestrian zone, no cars allowed, to enhance tourism from people wanting a real "historic American small-town experience".

The air smelled of burning wood, cut pine, and baking cookies (the bakery put a fresh batch in the window as she passed, sugar cookies cut and frosted into ornaments and Santas); the damp bite to the wind meant more snow on the way. This year, City Council had also put loudspeakers outside of city hall, blaring Christmas carols to the square.

Something for Frank and Joe. Kris had already given them the souvenirs from the Arizona Navajo reservation. Mar had taken her there that past summer, to meet her new adopted aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, and Kris had gotten a lot of little cool things to give to the brothers when she got back: carved turquoise horses, beaded headbands, fringed rabbit-skin pouches. But those were souvenirs, not Christmas gifts…at least, not what everyone here seemed to consider Christmas gifts.

She couldn't knit, though Mar was trying to teach her, and Frank and Joe probably wouldn't want pillows, which was all Kris could manage to sew — she'd overloaded her own bed with large overstuffed ones made out of scrap cloth, making it a comfortable study-spot, and Frank had asked if she could make him some, too, but those weren't special enough for _Christmas_. She wasn't good at baking stuff — not with Aunt Gertrude being the brothers' standard of comparison — and somehow the thought of just filling bags full of Christmas candy didn't seem special enough. Not by itself, anyway. Not for her big brothers.

Sharon, on the other hand…Mar had been right. Kris had finally admitted that to herself. It wouldn't be right to totally ignore Sharon, but she wasn't going to put much effort into it. That would let her focus more of her allowance on Joe. A bag of candy would be enough for Sharon. She'd overheard a few of her classmates doing the same thing she was, and that seemed to be the route most of them were taking, too.

"_**DECK **__the __**HALLS **__with__** BOUGHS OF HOLLY! FA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!"**_

The carol screamed out over those blaring City Hall loudspeakers, a hearty _basso profundo_ male choir. Everyone jumped; a couple girls screamed, then started laughing.

But Kris froze. Mama and Papa had _hated_ Christmas, calling it sinful and blasphemous; the worst beating Kris had ever gotten had been for asking about Santa, right before she'd run away. It hadn't helped that one of their neighbors played his stereo loud — with tons of Christmas carols — and it had come right through the rickety apartment walls at two AM.

Raving drunk on whiskey, Papa had gone off the deep end about this particular song, ranting about the demonic imagery of pagan idols. He'd caught Kris singing along to it — it'd been impossible not to, as often as it repeated from said neighbor's stereo — and Papa hadn't listened to her terrified apology, and he'd caught her, dragged her…

Even in the middle of Bayport's town square, surrounded by shoppers and screaming kids, the remembered stink of Papa's whiskey and cheap Old Spice suddenly overwhelmed her. Kris couldn't think, couldn't breathe, seeing Papa looming over her…

Trembling, Kris fled into the closest store, stumbling against the wall and tripping over a loose edge of carpet; the door slammed with a jangle of bells, cutting off the carol. Backed against a clutter of shelves, she closed her eyes, trying to calm down. _Breathe, _Boston Center's counselor had told her, a kindly white-haired woman who smelled of sandalwood, s_top whatever you're doing and breathe and concentrate on your breathing. _It'd been two years since Kris had run away, but Mar still took her up to Boston once a month for those sessions.

Calm came back, reality re-asserted itself: the murmur of customers, _Für Elise_ playing from the stereo behind the counter, the smell of cinnamon and clove, leather and old paper, someone haggling with a clerk over price.

"You okay, honey?" said a female voice, and Kris opened her eyes, saw the store's owner watching her: Widow Bell. Oh. No wonder she'd relaxed so fast.

Edna Bell owned Bayport's bookstore, Bell Book and Candle. The store had been a private brownstone residence on the town square, but after her husband's death in Korea, Mrs. Bell had bought and converted the entire house into a two-story bookstore, every single wall, closet, nook, and cranny filled with books (used and new), each section a different category. Cushions, beanbags, and comfy chairs were everywhere, and she had an agreement with the little cafe next door to share her patio in good weather.

Bookstores were rare in small towns; bookstores like _this, _unheard of. People came all the way from Boston and Anaheim to visit Bell Book and Candle, and it didn't hurt that Mrs. Bell was a really nice person.

Kris loved the place. One could get lost in the rambling hallways, the small staircases, the mazes of bookshelves and rooms; it was a warm, comfortable place, a wizard's lair and dragon's hoard in one. It was even better than the library, a library she could bring home and keep, and Mar never said no whenever Kris asked for a book.

Mrs. Bell was waiting for an answer, her eyes wrinkled with concern. Kris nodded. "Yes'm. Just tired."

Behind Mrs. Bell, her adult daughter, Martha, was rummaging through the area behind the counter; Martha helped her mother out in the shop. She had a pinched, scowling look to her face. "Mother, I can't find it."

"Well, I didn't move it," Mrs. Bell said, with a touch of annoyance. But then she sighed, smiled, and handed Kris a steaming mug of hot chocolate. "You look frozen, dearie. Here. Free hot chocolate for customers today. Mind the spills." She winked. "There's open chairs in the ghost section. Or should I have it all boxed up and delivered to your house?"

Kris smiled shyly. "Thank you, ma'am. But I'm just Christmas shopping. For Frank and Joe." She sipped carefully; the mug warmed her hands. It was one of the big mugs Mrs. Bell reserved for her regular customers: two big gooey marshmallows floated in it, with a peppermint stick.

Maybe she could convince Mar to take her through Boston's historic districts. Those had plenty of small, old-time shops. Kris could find her gifts for Frank and Joe there — Frank, especially. He loved history; his side of his and Joe's room was filled with books about colonial America and the various historical sites in Massachusetts.

She couldn't do Secret-Santa here, though. Books, for any of her classmates? She could hear the sneering laughter already. Some of those classmates had plenty to say about relatives who'd gotten them _books_ for their birthdays.

"Those two." Mrs. Bell shook her head, smiling. "Frank's got half my stock on his wish-list, I swear. I can certainly help you there. Go get warmed up and let me know when you're ready."

Kris smiled her thanks again, and wandered upstairs to her favorite section, Occult — most of the section was books about ghosts, hauntings, and weird occurrences: the works of Charles Fort, Ripley's "Believe it or Not" books, Alfred Hitchcock's true ghost stories, _Fate Magazine_ and its various books. It wasn't a big section. There wasn't a lot of call for such books in small-town, Christian, conservative Bayport.

But Kris stopped. Someone else was there: Sharon, squatting and reading a book with the air of someone too fascinated by what they were reading to take a few seconds to get comfortable. "Um…"

Sharon startled, lost her balance, caught herself, and spent a long moment staring wide-eyed at Kris.

"Sorry," Kris mumbled. "I didn't mean to scare you." She set the mug of hot chocolate carefully down on the small coffee table next to Sharon's and eased into one of the comfy chairs. Kris snuck a peek at Sharon's mug: the same as hers. One of the big mugs, a peppermint stick and gooey marshmallows, both in an advanced state of melt, so Sharon had been here a while…and all of which meant Sharon was another of Mrs. Bell's regulars.

Sharon was still staring at her.

Anything to break that weird, uncomfortable stare. Kris said the first thing that came to mind. "Are you Secret-Santa shopping, too?"

Sharon shook her head.

Kris almost asked who she'd gotten, decided against it. Sharon might then ask who Kris had drawn, and Kris didn't like lying. But then a book caught her eye, something that hadn't been there last week, and Kris got up, pulled it down off the shelf: _What Witches Do._

It had to be a joke. Some fundamentalist rant, maybe. Mrs. Bell wouldn't have something about real witchcraft on the shelf, not here in Bayport — though thinking about it, she did carry the Sybil Leek books behind the counter, where they couldn't be stolen or vandalized. Curious, Kris leafed through the new book, stopped on a page at random and started reading; the author sounded serious, respectful, and real.

Mar was Catholic, but didn't force the matter with Kris, allowing her to follow whatever she wanted and letting her stay home when Mar went to church. Kris had overheard a few folks at Bay Area Center talking about "the New Age" and "neopaganism" and the "Age of Aquarius", but she'd been too shy to approach them to ask what they meant. They'd looked like hippies, all bright colors and tie-dyes and long hair, even the men, something else Papa had railed against as evil and Satanic…

"You really do like stuff like that," Sharon said.

Kris felt her face get hot. The last thing she needed was for word to get around school that she was a witch, just because she'd looked at a book. She shrugged. "It looked interesting."

Sharon watched her. "You know this place is haunted."

That was the last thing Kris had expected Sharon to say. "Yeah. Mr. Bell kinda hangs around." Then Kris clamped her mouth shut. She hadn't meant to say that, but it'd slipped out. Now she was in for it.

"You've seen him?" Sharon was wide-eyed.

Kris looked down. "Um. That's what Mrs. Bell says." Which was the truth. Kris hadn't exactly seen Mr. Bell, but she'd caught glimpses of _someone, _and whoever it was hadn't felt _bad_.

"Oh." Sharon sounded disappointed.

Kris glanced around. She could hear other customers talking in low voices — it sounded like they were in the Sci-Fi section around the corner. Probably not a good idea to lower her mental shields, then, but still… "You have?"

Sharon was looking at the books again. She shrugged.

Well, one more person at school laughing at her wouldn't matter at this point. "Um…I've seen something. Someone in green watching me. But when I turned around, they weren't there." Kris put _What Witches Do_ back on the shelf. "It was probably just Martha." Martha was suspicious of _everyone._

"No, that's him," Sharon said, wide-eyed again. "It's Mr. Bell? He's always in fatigues, and he looks so sad."

Kris blinked. Mrs. Bell had shown her pictures of her husband, taken while he was in Korea, with his buddies outside their tent. "He was killed in Korea."

"He was? I didn't know that."

"His picture's hanging behind the counter," Kris said, nodding. "Mrs. Bell'll tell you about it if you ask nice."

Silence fell; Sharon turned back to the books, though she kept giving Kris odd, slant-wise glances.

"You're friends with Frank and Joe," Sharon said finally. "I didn't think you'd like this kind of stuff. I thought…" She broke off, biting her lip.

"They don't. I do. I mean, they don't care that I do, but they don't believe it. Frank's real good at explaining what it really is." Kris smiled, just a little. "Sometimes he's right."

"He's nice. He helped me with my bike when the chain broke. And Joe lent me lunch money when Bobby Johnson stole mine." Then, slowly, "You really believe in ghosts?"

"Um…no," Kris said, and Sharon's face fell. "I mean, that's like asking if I believe in rocks. They're real. All those people write about 'em." She pointed at the Hitchcock ghost books. "It wouldn't be in a book if it wasn't true."

"No one else believes me," Sharon said. Low, sad. "You're the first person I've met who does."

Wait… "You've seen other ghosts?"

Biting her lip again, Sharon nodded. Her look turned speculative, as if weighing something. "Um, you know Frank and Joe — they found the Applegate treasure last summer — did you ever go out to the old farmhouse with them?"

With what they were talking about, there was no reason to bring up the ruined farmhouse, unless… "You met Abby?"

That convinced her. Kris had never told anyone about the little ghost stuck in the abandoned farmhouse; Abby was her friend.

Sharon's face lit up. "You _do_ know!"

They fell silent as a couple prim-looking older women in bouffant hairdos and gray woolen shirt-dresses pushed through the section on their way to Religion and Philosophy. From somewhere downstairs, Kris heard the loud voices and laughter of other kids — Angie and her crowd, it sounded like, and they were tromping up the stairs. Great.

Kris saw the expression on Sharon's face, and that decided her. Maybe the Secret-Santa thing wasn't so bad, after all. "Um…do you want…maybe…you'd like to come back to my house? We can keep talking there." On impulse, she added, "I've got other books like this. You can borrow some if you want."

Sharon shook her head. "Mom and Dad hate this stuff." She looked down at the book in her hand, _Fate's Strangest Mysteries._ "I've been reading it here. I can't buy it. They'd just make me bring it back." Then, shyly, "I'd like to come over, though."

"Y'know, I don't have that one yet. Here." Kris took the _Fate _book, and on impulse, also pulled _What Witches Do_ from the shelf. "I'll get it for you, and you can come over and read it whenever you want."

"But…you said you're Christmas shopping, that's your Christmas money…"

"I've got extra," Kris said, stretching the truth a bit. "_Shimá_ knew I'd end up here. C'mon." Her chest and gut felt odd, different, light and twisty at the same time. It felt good. Weird, but good.

They waited until Angie's group had clattered past towards the Romance section, then headed downstairs. Mrs. Bell was talking with Martha, and both adults looked upset.

"I'm telling you, Mother, it was here last night! I put it right here! Just like those other things — "

"You're probably mis-remembering," Mrs. Bell said wearily, then saw Kris and smiled. "All set, dear? Do you still need help with Frank's gift?"

"Yes'm, please," Kris said. "Um…is something wrong?"

"Not really," Mrs. Bell sighed. "My daughter just keeps misplacing stuff. Now she's blaming Papa."

"Mother!"

"Mr. Bell's making stuff vanish?" A ghost was making things disappear? That had the sound of a really cool ghost story. Kris glanced at Sharon, whose face had lit up again.

Mrs. Bell's mouth twitched. "No, dear. Just our own little mystery, here in the store. There's been a lot of them, lately."

"Too many," Martha said. "We lost a whole package of markers yesterday, my transistor radio the day before that, and books keep disappearing. But this was the petty cash box, and I _know_ I put it right here."

Ghosts didn't need money, definitely. Sometimes they moved things around, but making stuff disappear? That couldn't be a ghost…then something lit up in the back of Kris's head. Perfect, just too perfect! "Um…Mrs. Bell…ma'am? My big brothers solve mysteries."

Mrs. Bell smiled. "Yes, dear. We all know about Frank and Joe's little hobby. This isn't anything like that."

"But…well…I was hoping for a really cool Christmas gift, ma'am, and giving them a mystery…especially here, this is Frank's favorite store, he'd be happy to help you figure out what's going on."

"There's no mystery about it," Mrs. Bell said. "Just forgetful employees, that's all."

"Mo-_ther!"_

"But…what if someone is getting in here?" Kris said, and behind Mrs. Bell's back, Martha looked gratified, nodding. "A cash box is kind of a weird thing for someone to forget where they put it. Even if they find it's just people forgetting or…or…Mr. Bell, that's still an answer."

Mrs. Bell opened her mouth, shut it, looked at Kris for a long moment.

"They found Mr. Applegate's treasure last summer," Sharon piped up. "And they found out who vandalized Mr. Mack's lab."

"It's just small stuff, right?" Kris said. "And Frank and Joe'll be careful. You know Frank will." Mrs. Bell looked thoughtful, and Kris took that as a good sign. "Ma'am…please…I really really want a good Christmas gift for them. They've done so much for me and they've helped me a lot…and…well…I could get Frank books, and I could find something for Joe, and I still will…but they'd love a real mystery even better."

Finally, Mrs. Bell smiled. "A truly unique Christmas gift. I see. Well. You and your mother are good customers, as is Frank. I guess it can't hurt."

Kris blinked, then it sunk in that it had sounded as if Mrs. Bell had said _yes. _"Ma'am? You mean it? Really?"

"Really," Mrs. Bell said. "Have Frank and Joe come see me. If you want to wait until Christmas to make it a proper gift, that's fine. The world won't end if a few more books go missing."

Kris barely clamped her mouth shut before she squealed in glee and totally disgraced herself. "Thank you! Thank you!" She felt like she was going to fly: a really cool gift for her big brothers, and maybe a new friend on top of that…!

Bouncing on her feet, she waited, as Mrs. Bell rung up the two books (plus a couple that she said were on Frank's wish-list), then Kris ran for the door, pulling Sharon after her. Wait until she toldMar!

"Kris?" Mrs. Bell's voice pulled Kris up short, just as she reached the door.

"Ma'am?" Had she forgotten something?

But Mrs. Bell was smiling again. "Merry Christmas, dear."


	4. Shock

Joe was coming to the fast conclusion that he _hated_ the whole Secret Santa idea.

He had no idea what to get girls — well, okay, Kris was a girl, but she didn't count. She liked cool stuff like he and Frank did, even if some of it was spooky and weird. But real girls? Regular girls, who giggled and squealed and talked in those whispery huddles while making puppy-eyes at the boys?

Kris wouldn't be any help. He didn't dare ask Chet, who was Iola's brother — Joe definitely didn't want any word to get back to Iola that he was her Secret Santa. At least, not until the day they were supposed to reveal it. Joe did not want to spend the next two weeks at school with Iola giggling and googly-eyeing him and getting all the wrong ideas.

He finally settled on stuffing a bag full of Christmas chocolates for the first surprise, all wrapped in bright Santa- and Christmas-tree-printed foil. Monday morning, he got lucky — Iola's locker was unlocked. Joe was able to drop the bag into it before anyone saw him…except Sharon. Sharon had just shut Joe's locker, saw Joe coming up, and reddened.

Well, that was okay. Sharon knew anyway.

"Kris?" Joe said quietly — other kids were running through the hall now — and Sharon nodded. "Let me check her locker real quick, and you can move it. She didn't walk to school with us, for some reason." It was the work of a moment to open Kris's locker and check to make sure nothing nasty was in it — no baby powder, no sour milk — then he slipped Sharon's small wrapped box onto Kris's locker shelf.

Then Joe saw another wrapped box on his own shelf, with _his_ name on it.

He looked at Sharon, who blushed again. "Um, it was already there," Sharon mumbled. "I — uh — didn't see who."

Joe sighed. "I know." She'd had Iola before he'd traded her, after all, not him, and they weren't supposed to tell if they found out who other people's were. But that meant that whoever had his name also knew his locker combination, or they'd bribed Frank. Thinking that over, Joe got his math books and binder for first period, grabbed the box, and moved a ways down the hall, keeping an eye on Kris's locker to make sure none of Angie's crowd messed with it.

But Frank and Callie showed up, and settled casually near the lockers, talking — there was an idea. Maybe Joe could ask Callie about what girls liked for Christmas. Then Frank caught his brother's eye and nodded at Kris's locker, and Joe went on to homeroom.

"I saw you at Kris's house yesterday," Joe said to Sharon, grinning, as he slid into his seat. She sat right in front of him.

Sharon nodded. "You didn't tell me her mom was an _Indian. _And she's got all these great books on ghosts and stuff!"

That was promising; Sharon sounded awed. "Kris's adopted. Mar's from the Arizona reservation. Kris got to go to there this summer and now she's got all these aunts and uncles who are all Indians, too," Joe added, jealous. "She got me and Frank all kinds of cool stuff."

"She told me." Sharon looked wistful. "You think they allow visitors?"

"Uh-huh. Mar wanted to take me and Frank along, but Dad said not this year. Maybe next year."

"Joe!" Kris came in, right over to their desk; she looked flushed and happy, clutching books and the little wrapped box. "You won't believe it — I just told Frank. Mar got a phone call this morning, that's why I didn't walk with you guys. But Charlie's got leave. He's coming in for Christmas and spending a whole month with us!"

_That_ was totally killer news! "He is? _Wow!"_

Kris was bouncing on her feet. "Yeah. He just finished his second tour of duty, and they offered him a thirty-day leave if he signed up for another 'Nam tour. He's taking it — he told _Shimá_ that he's up for promotion when he gets back."

"Who's Charlie?" Sharon said.

"Mar's son," Joe said, with hushed reverence. "He's a _fighter pilot."_ Joe had seen a lot of old movies on World War Two flying aces, and he imagined Charlie a lot like Michael Caine in _Battle for Britain._

"He's in 'Nam," Kris said. "He's lots older than me. I've never met him, but he sounds really nice whenever he calls. I told him about you and Frank and he said he can't wait to meet his new kid brothers."

"_Really?"_ An Air Force fighter pilot, a real Indian warrior, wanting to meet him and Frank? Calling them his new kid brothers? Joe felt like his grin would split his head in half; he barely heard Miss Hawkins call them all to order for the Pledge and to take attendance.

Wendy poking him in the back brought him back to earth with a mental _thump_, as she passed him a red envelope marked "_TOP SECRET!"_ in Kris's heavy-handed printing and a horribly-drawn skull and crossbones on it. Joe blinked, then quickly hid the envelope as Miss Hawkins walked by his desk. Somehow he waited until the homeroom bell rang, then looked around for Kris.

She still sat at her desk, staring at the little wrapped box from Sharon, now unwrapped. Joe couldn't see what it was — something that glittered in a patch of sunlight on her desk — but Kris looked up at him, openly stunned.

He grinned at her, but ducked out of the room before she could get any ideas or ask him any questions. The note was itching at him, and he tore it open. Folded inside was yellow goldenrod paper, with smudgy type-written letters in all-caps:

_TOP SECRET — HIGHLY IMPORTANT — CLASSIFIED_

_YOUR MISSION, IF YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT_

_Valuable objects are vanishing without a trace. No one knows how. Report to Mrs. Edna Bell at Bell Book And Candle for full mission details. If you or Frank get caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. _

_THIS MESSAGE WILL SELF-DESTRUCT 10 SECONDS AFTER YOU READ IT._

Now Joe was grinning; _Mission Impossible _was his and Frank's favorite show. Dad always let them stay up late on Saturday night to watch with him, with a big bowl of popcorn, Dad with his beer, Frank and Joe with root beers — Saturday night was Dad's night to goof off his sons, and he never, ever, let anything interfere with it.

Further down the page, in a smaller, barely-legible handwritten scrawl:

_(Merry Christmas, Big Brother! This is your early Christmas gift. Enjoy the mystery! Kris)_

Then, to his shock, the paper started to smoke — he let go just in time, as it went up in a quick burst of sparks, just like flash paper.

"You got your marching orders, too?" Frank said, from behind him.

"How did she do that?" Joe stared at the ashes as they drifted in the air currents. His classmates were pointing, whispering.

"The tagalong and her magic tricks," Frank said, grinning. "She won't tell, you know that. Some chemical reaction from body heat, I bet."

Now Joe started to grin again, and walked with Frank along the hall. "I can't wait. Bell Book and Candle? What do you think's going on?"

"Tag claims it's haunted," Frank said. "Maybe it's the ghost."

"Maybe Mrs. Bell found out all those books melted your brain and it's really a trap to take you away to the funny farm." With that, Joe and Frank got into a brief mock-shoving match, then Joe ran to get to his math class. Only then did he remember the wrapped package.

He plopped down in his desk, pulled the package out of his book bag and opened it…and sat back, staring in disbelief.

_Old Spice Aftershave…?_

That made absolutely no sense. He was nowhere close to shaving, not that he wanted to. It seemed like nothing but a lot of hassle, and besides, all the cool musicians wore beards.

He hated the smell of Old Spice, on top of that. Uncle Jack wore it, and wore it too heavy. Between that and the smell of whatever Uncle Jack had been drinking, Joe always kept at least two of the other uncles and aunts between him and Uncle Jack whenever there was a family get-together.

Joe scowled at the bottle. His Secret Santa was a loon, if they thought Joe wanted this stuff. Either that, or it was something meant to be funny — if that was it, Joe didn't get the joke — or just flat-out mean.

Just great. Just absolutely great. He'd gone to all the trouble of making sure Kris had a good Santa, and he'd only gotten the short-end of the stick in return.

Then Joe saw the note card, stuck to the inside of the wrapping paper, something hand-written in heavy black marker…and he went cold all over.

_For you and your little whore girlfriend…_


	5. Santa

_**A/N: Thanks for the reviews! Quick note here. I know "retarded" is not the word to use when talking about mentally disabled folks - but back in the early '70s, that was the "PC" word; my hometown even had the "Doty House for Retarded Children". So there's no need to PM me - and Happy New Year, everyone!  
**_

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Giddy, Kris nearly bounced all the way up the stairs to school; Mar had driven her in, since Charlie's phone call had her running late. Charlie was coming in for Christmas! Kris had been wanting to meet him ever since Mar had told her about her oldest son being in Vietnam, though Kris had been disappointed that he was in the Air Force and not the Army, like Joshua. Charlie always sounded really nice over the phone, with a deep furry voice; he'd been tickled at having a little sister, and he'd laughed when she'd told him about her 'big brothers'. Mar was planning on spending part of Charlie's leave — the school's Christmas break — back in Arizona, to have New Year's with her family and give everyone a chance to welcome him back.

Maybe Kris could ask Mar if Frank and Joe could come, too. Granted, everyone said Christmas was for family, but technically, it'd be New Year's. Her new cousins had been fascinated at the thought of Kris having detective big-brothers, with a famous detective for a father.

Kris managed to calm down once she hit the crowded hallway. Frank and Callie were chatting by her locker; Callie was okay, even though they weren't friends. Callie was in eighth grade already, but she was always nice to everybody, and it was obvious that Frank _really_ liked her. Kris used her little bit of telekinesis to slip the red envelope into Frank's book-bag while she told them about Charlie. Frank being there meant that Angie and her crowd hadn't messed with Kris's locker, to her relief. Kris opened it, and stopped.

A small box wrapped in red foil and tied with a green ribbon sat on the shelf, with a tag that had "From Santa" typed on it.

Kris blinked at it. Okay. Only Frank and Joe had her locker combination — Angie and company never bothered with the lock; they pried the hinges open, or sprayed baby powder and other stuff through the vents. Frank wasn't in her class, so he couldn't have drawn her name, and the brothers wouldn't give her combination out. So…it had to be Joe.

What was the point of it being "secret" Santa and not telling her if Joe then did something like this?

Well, it wasn't like Joe always thought things through.

"Something wrong?" Frank said.

Kris shook her head, then grabbed the box off the shelf and started putting her books in from her book-bag.

"Chet and Iola are having the Christmas party on Saturday," Callie said to her. "I told Iola that's your birthday, too. She said her mom would make a cake and add that in, if that's okay."

Kris stopped. "Um…a cake? Why?"

"Her original parents never celebrated birthdays, Callie," Frank said quietly.

"Oh." Callie reddened. "I mean a cake for your birthday. If it's against your religion…"

"No!" Kris managed, then swallowed, tried again, blushing herself. Thinking about it, Mar had mentioned something like this. "I mean, it's fine. I…uh…I mean…thanks."

"Thank Iola," Callie said. "It was her idea."

"She doesn't know about _birthdays?" _someone sneered behind Kris. It sounded like Angie Thompson. "Oh man, how dumb can you get?"

Feeling stupid, Kris shrank back. Frank turned, but Callie beat him to it.

"Maybe if _your _parents beat you up whenever you asked a question, you'd have an excuse to be ignorant, too, Angie," Callie said sweetly. "So what _is_ your excuse?"

Angie didn't answer that, only swept on by, giggling and snickering with her circle.

"Ignore them, Kris," Frank said. "Your friends know what's up."

"And you keep right on asking stuff," Callie said to her. "The real stupid people are the ones like her that never ask and think it's cool to pretend they know everything. They'll stay stupid and you'll get smart."

Still feeling stupid, Kris kept her gaze down. But she had to bring it up. "Um…I don't know if it's rude, big brother…"

"It's okay," Frank said. "Just say it."

"Well…Mar said people give presents on birthdays, right?" Kris waited for Frank's nod. "Um…they don't need to bother with that part. I mean, it's so close to Christmas, and it's kinda short notice…"

"I get it," Callie said, smiling. "I'll tell everyone."

"Having a birthday near Christmas is really rotten," Frank said. "You better get moving, Tag. Homeroom."

Kris smiled her goodbye; despite Angie, she felt light, again, as if her heart would fly right out of her chest. That they wanted to do something like that…that meant…maybe…the others thought she was a friend, too? She'd thought that Frank and Joe's friends considered her just a hanger-on, tagging along behind them and getting included in stuff because Frank and Joe insisted on it. But a cake for her birthday? Iola and Chet didn't have to do that. Maybe…just maybe…

Kris found Sharon's locker and looked around the hall quickly — no sign of her, and no one paying attention. Just a touch of mage-Gift, and Sharon's lock popped open; Kris set the bag of Christmas candy on the shelf, closed the locker, then scurried off to homeroom. Just enough time to tell Joe about Charlie…then she passed his red envelope up to him when Miss Hawkins wasn't looking. Luckily, Wendy sat between Kris and Joe, and while Wendy wasn't a friend, she wasn't mean, either. Hopefully Joe would wait until after homeroom before he opened it.

It'd felt good buying that book for Sharon, too. Sharon had been awed over Kris's book collection, and they'd spent a couple hours swapping ghost stories and poring over _What Witches Do_ in fascinated horror — if _that_ was what witches did, then Kris wanted nothing to do with the so-called 'new age of Aquarius' those hippies had spoken about. Then Kris had taken a chance and told Sharon the real story behind her and the brothers' kidnapping last year — and Sharon believed her, had ooh'ed and ahh'd and gasped in horror in all the right places.

Then the really unexpected: Mar had invited Sharon to stay for dinner, and Sharon's parents had allowed it.

A friend. Kris had a friend.

The homeroom bell rang, startling Kris out of her thoughts. She'd almost forgotten the little wrapped box. Everyone was rushing to get out of the room; she had a few minutes. She pulled it out, opened it…and sat back, stunned.

A twinned quartz crystal, as big as her palm.

Both points were water-clear, save for a flaw in the center of one that refracted the sunlight into rainbows inside the crystal. Kris turned it around and around, watching how it caught the sunlight and how the flaw filled it with color. She'd started collecting pretty rocks over the summer, after her visit to the reservation — crystals. Quartz was common out in Arizona, and she'd brought home quite a few sizable points, which now sat on her window sill, shining in the sunlight.

Kris blinked, and blinked again, trying to get her eyes to clear. It was beautiful. It was perfect.

The she looked up, saw Joe watching her.

He grinned and dashed out of the room.

Oh man. And Mar didn't want her doing anything extra special for Joe? For her big brother who was doing stuff like _this_ for her?

Hopefully, the red envelopes would even things out a little.

Kris gathered up her books and binder and put the quartz carefully in her sweater pocket. She wasn't going to leave it in her locker for Angie's crowd to possibly get at. But now she had math class, which she hated. Simple sums were all right, but anything past that confused her, and Mr. Gregory didn't help matters.

"Kris?" It was a breathless voice behind her — Iola.

Unexpectedly, a smile welled up from somewhere; it felt strange on Kris's face. "Hey. Callie told me about the cake. Um…thanks."

Iola smiled back, dimpling. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed; she could've been a princess in a fairy tale. "Me and Chet wanted to make up for all that horrible stuff last year. Kris…um…you're good friends with Frank and Joe, right?"

Kris nodded, shifted. She could guess what was coming.

"Well…" Iola blushed, looked around, lowered her voice. "I kinda got Joe for Secret Santa. I mean, I know what stuff boys like, but I'd like to get something special for Joe. I know he's into all that mystery stuff, but I don't know anything about that or what he's got already."

Translation: she'd traded around names and finally gotten Joe. Oh brother. Kris hesitated. She knew Iola really liked Joe and wanted him as her boyfriend, but she also knew that Joe wasn't into all that icky boy-girl stuff.

"Please?" Iola begged. "I know he doesn't like me much. But maybe I can…well…convince him. I tried asking Chet, but he just laughed at me."

Then again, maybe this was a way Kris could do something special for Joe, through Iola. "I've got math class right now. But…um…today's one of my tutor days, so I have to stay after school. If you want to meet me then, I mean."

Iola's face lit up. "Really? You're the greatest. Thank you, oh thank you!" Then, before Kris could flinch away, Iola hugged her and skipped off to her next class.

Stunned, Kris stood there. She'd never been called the 'greatest' by anyone here before. Iola had never been mean to her, but Kris had stayed wary of her crowd. They were linked with Angie's circle, somewhat, Iola being a cheerleader for the middle school basketball team.

Kris made it to math class barely ahead of the bell, and slid into her desk next to Joe. He was holding something in his hands, turning it over and over — a bottle of Old Spice, with torn wrapping paper on his desk.

"Um," Kris said, staring. "What's that for?"

Joe startled, then shoved a small white card into his pocket. "My Secret Santa gave it to me."

Iola really needed help, then; even Kris knew better than to give Joe _that_. Kris touched the quartz in her pocket, but right then, Mr. Gregory came in and started writing out the homework problems on the board; he was a pock-marked man with thick glasses and scraggly beard. Once his back was turned, she leaned over. "Hey," she whispered at Joe. "Thank you."

He blinked at her. "For what?"

"For the quartz," Kris said. "It's _beautiful."_

He gave her a lopsided grin. "It wasn't me."

"Mr. Hardy, Miss Mountainhawk," Mr. Gregory said, without turning around. "Share your juicy gossip with the rest of the class, instead of whispering about it, please."

Her face hot, Kris shrank down into her seat, as the rest of the class laughed.

"Kris was just thanking me for a gift, sir," Joe said. "Sorry."

"Oooh, they're in _love,"_ someone said behind them, to another chorus of mean laughter and muted cat-calls. "Joe's got a _girlfriend."_

"An ugly little girlfriend," Angie Thompson said, behind Joe, to more laughter. "What's the matter, Joe, Iola turn you down?"

"Miss Thompson," Mr. Gregory said, "your opinion was not asked for. For that, you can come up here and do problems one through five on the board, if you please, and you'll see me after class. Kris, since you're so prepared that you can talk about other things in my class, you can do the same for problems six through eight. Joe, nine through twelve. Up here, people. Now."

Standing next to Angie Thompson while trying to figure out long multiplication in front of the whole class…not the best start to the day. Kris had tried to do them at home, but hadn't gotten very far. She'd planned to ask Frank for help, but had kept putting it off, and putting it off…

Total, complete disaster. Mr. Gregory held her back after class, made her wait out in the hall while he talked to Angie, then after Angie huffed out, he called Kris in and told her he was placing her in remedial math in the Special Ed trailer, in place of his class. Kris only stared at her shoes, let his words wash over her; his breath stunk like the valerian in Mar's garden room. At this rate, she'd never catch up.

To her surprise, Joe was waiting for her in the hall when she finally came out. "Bad?" Joe said.

Kris nodded. She wasn't going to cry. Not here. Not in the hallway.

"He's mean to everyone," Joe said. "It's okay, Tag."

"More trailer classes," Kris whispered, wiping at her eyes; Joe walked with her to her locker. "Just like a dummy. A retard."

"You're not. It's not your fault your parents never let you go to school. You just need to catch up, that's all. What'd you get from your Santa? Can I see?"

She pulled the quartz out from her pocket. Even under the hallway's fluorescent lights, it gleamed.

Joe gaped. "Wow. That's _cool —_ it's got a phantom!" He traced the flaw. "That's where another crystal tried to form. See?"

She wasn't going to let him distract her. "Joe, come on. It was in my locker. You and Frank are the only ones who know my combination. I know it was you."

"Nope. Sure wasn't." Grinning again, Joe looked around the hallway, lowered his voice. "Mine's Iola. Here." He pulled out a slip of paper, identical to all the ones in the Santa basket; it had Iola's name printed on it, with an ink-stamp of Santa.

His was _Iola?_ And Iola had _him?_ Oh…brother. Kris bit her lip.

"What's so funny?" Joe said suspiciously.

"Um…nothing. But how they get in my locker? I don't want someone messing it up again."

"Magic," Joe said, grinning again. "Just like your envelope, Tagalong. How'd you do that? That was totally killer."

Blushing, Kris looked down. He wouldn't believe her. He and Frank always thought her Gift was a stage magic trick, and kept pestering her for how it was done. "Um…magic."

Joe rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine, don't tell. I know all you magicians swear that big top secret oath to not reveal your secrets. I'm gonna learn all that stuff, too, and start baffling you _back!"_

"I have to get to History," Kris mumbled, and fled before he could ask her anything else.

So he didn't have her for Secret Santa. He had Iola. But…that meant someone else had her combination. Someone else could get in her locker and leave all kinds of bad stuff. Peanut butter smeared on her books, dead frogs stolen from Mr. Mack's lab, horrible stuff that made her late and got her in trouble and had everyone laughing at her.

_No._ Frank and Joe wouldn't do that to her. Maybe…maybe Joe knew who her Santa was, and helped them. Or Frank did — he was hanging around her locker this morning. Maybe Frank and Joe told whoever it was about her liking pretty rocks, too. Everyone knew they were neighbors, after all. Hadn't Iola just done the same thing for Joe? At that, Kris breathed a little easier. Mystery solved.

But that meant someone else was being nice to her. Someone who _wanted_ to, for no reason other than a piece of paper drawn out of a basket. Kris wasn't sure what to make of that. Maybe it was just a trick…what was the phrase she'd heard Frank use last week? A set-up. Look what her own parents had done, after all. Someone could've fooled Joe and Frank. Someone could be playing at being nice, just to get at her.

Kris stood there, breathing in and out, slow and deep until the panic calmed. No, Frank and Joe wouldn't fall for that. They knew everyone. They knew who the bullies were, and they were tons smarter than she was.

Her hand kept straying to the crystal in her pocket all through the rest of the day, tracing the planes, touching the tips; it was always smooth and cool to her fingertips. When the remedial English teacher (Miss Hawkins) told the Special Ed kids to write a short essay on what they wanted for Christmas ("and make sure you use at least three paragraphs"), Kris brought the stone out and set it at the top of her notebook page, where she could see it. The Special Ed trailer was always a bit gloomy because of the small windows, but the crystal was a bright, happy bit of sunlight.

A shadow fell over her. Kris looked up.

"Your Secret Santa?" Miss Hawkins smiled her usual teacher-y condescending smile.

Kris nodded.

"Can…I…s-s-see?" The slow, deliberate voice was Tina, a chunky retarded kid about Kris's age — no, 'Downs syndrome', according to Miss Hawkins, who corrected kids primly whenever she caught them using the other word.

Kris handed her the crystal, and Tina ooh'd over it, turning it around and around in her hand and smiling when she saw the rainbow it cast on the desk. Kris watched her, fascinated; Tina's face looked like a lump of unbaked dough, but when she smiled, she looked like a goofy Pillsbury dough-boy. It was funny and cute, in a way.

"Did your Santa get you anything yet, Tina?" Miss Hawkins said, still smiling.

Tina shook her head. "N-n-no. An-angie said…she w-w-wasn't…w-w-wasting m-m-money…on-on-on…s-s-stupid retards."

Miss Hawkins's smile froze.

Tina handed the crystal back to Kris. "P-pretty. Th-thank…you."

Kris bit back anger and sudden tears. Just once, just _once,_ she wanted to get back at Angie and her crowd. But Mar had warned her about using her Gift like that, and Mar would know somehow, Kris was certain. _Making it right doesn't mean doing a wrong,_ Mar had told her. _Teaching a lesson to scum is useless — it just remains scum._

She set the crystal back on the notebook, and tried to focus on the essay again, couldn't. Miss Hawkins was still smiling in that frozen way, even as she turned to the other Special Ed kids to help them with the essay (one 'dyslexic', another retarded kid even worse off than Tina, and a couple others like Kris who were 'just dumb', according to everyone else). However, Kris sat there staring at her paper, wondering how to make paragraphs over not wanting anything. Miss Hawkins only looked at her weird when Kris said that, and finally Kris decided just to make something up.

As usual, Tina struggled through hers, reading it out loud as she wrote it. All through the class, as she worked, Kris kept eyeing the crystal, how it caught the dim light and sparkled with rainbows, as Tina read about wanting Santa to bring her pretty rocks "j-j-just l-l-like…K-k-k-kris's", sounding it out word by word as she wrote. Finally, as everyone was gathering papers and books up to head back to the main building, Kris picked the crystal up. Decision made.

"Here," she said to Tina, and placed the crystal in Tina's hand.

Tina stared at her. "B-b-but…that…w-w-was…y-y-your…g-gift."

Kris lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Don't tell anyone, but I'm your real Secret Santa. It's supposed to be a secret, okay?"

"B-but Ang-angie…s-s-said…"

"She was lying. You know how mean she is. I just didn't know what to get you, that's why you didn't get anything today. You like rocks?"

Tina nodded. "P-p-pretty rocks. M-mommy…calls m-me…her l-l-little…c-cr-crystal." She touched something on her chest: a rough amethyst point wrapped in delicate copper wire and strung on a leather cord. "Sh-sh-she g-got…m-me…th-this…f-f-for m-my…b-b-b-birthday."

"My mom and I were out in Arizona over the summer, and I brought back lots of crystals. Would you like to come over and see them?"

That seemed to confuse Tina for a moment, but then she broke out in another Pillsbury Doughboy smile. "R-r-really? Y-you…m-mean…it?"

Kris nodded, and walked with Tina to the girl's next class, even though that made Kris late for Mr. Mack's science class; Tina was in completely different classes from her, save for homeroom and Special Ed. Luckily, Mr. Mack was in the supply closet and didn't notice.

Sliding into her seat at the back, Kris couldn't get what'd happened out of her head, and she scowled at Angie, who sat in the front with Susan and Lisa, all three whispering and snickering as they glanced back towards Kris and at Joe (who sat in the front row).

"Where's the box?" Sharon whispered, when Mr. Mack passed out the day's lab supplies; Sharon had taken the empty seat next to her. "You had it in homeroom — your Santa thing?" When Kris looked at her, Sharon blushed. "I…um…was just curious what you got. Almost everyone else got candy."

"I gave it away," Kris said.

"You…_what?"_

Kris glanced; Mr. Mack was still distracted. "You would've done the same thing." Quickly, she whispered what had happened, and Sharon's expression turned into the same outrage.

"That was really mean," Kris whispered finally. "I mean, Tina can't help that she's like that. I'll leave a note for my Santa in my locker and explain."

"Mine gave me candy," Sharon said. "Does Tina have a locker? I ate some of it already, but not the candy canes and they're big enough to be gifts all by themselves."

Kris blinked. She hadn't expected that.

Now there were two girls glaring at Angie from the back of science class, and Angie looked uncertain whenever she caught sight of them. Joe sat in the front row, near the windows; even he noticed something was up. When the bell rang, Joe threaded his way back before Kris could gather her books up.

"You two look ready to murder someone. What happened?"

Kris whispered the whole tale again as they left the room, and then there were three people glaring at Angie as she passed them in the hallway.

"I'll tell Frank. Maybe he'll have some ideas." But Joe looked glum. "I don't want to short my Santa person…but maybe I can get Aunt Gertrude to bake some cookies for Tina."

"Don't give her the Old Spice," Kris said, and Joe rolled his eyes.

"If Tina comes over your place tonight," Sharon said to Kris, "I can bring some of Mom's peanut brittle. You can bring the cookies over then, Joe. That way it doesn't look like we're throwing her a pity party at school."

"You're pretty smart for a girl," Joe said, grinning, and ducked down the hall to the lunchroom before either girl could retort.

Finding Tina's locker and popping the lock with her Gift was easy enough. Kris kept a nervous watch as Sharon slipped the big candy canes into Tina's coat pocket, then shut the door and re-locked it. Then both Sharon and Kris headed off to lunch, but Kris was still thinking.

This whole secret Christmas thing was going to drive her insane, she knew it. Now she had to get special stuff for _four_ people…


	6. Mystery

_**A/N: Thanks for the reviews, Xenitia, Leyapearl, SnowPrincess88, Max2013, Guest! I hope everyone's New Year was fun & happy! And yes, we'll be seeing more of Charlie!**_

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Despite the Old Spice note, Joe couldn't wait for after school. Frank had called Bell Book and Candle from the school office at lunch, had told Mrs. Bell they'd be there, then had called Aunt Gertrude to let her know the brothers would be late coming home. Now it was just a matter of waiting out the rest of the day and trying not to fidget. Everything dragged along, even Science, though Mr. Mack went over the physics of flying reindeer and what Santa would have to do to travel the whole world in one night.

"Angel poop," Joe mouthed, towards Kris in the back; he'd noticed her and Sharon glaring at the front, where Angie sat. Hopefully he could distract Kris before she had any kind of meltdown.

Mr. Mack paused by Joe's desk, looked down. "Pardon me?"

Uh-oh. Think fast. "Um," Joe said. "I was just thinking. I mean, reindeer are pretty big animals, and Santa doesn't leave any evidence behind, right? So how does he get rid of the…um…?"

"Reindeer poop," Mr. Mack said, and the class laughed.

"Yeah," Joe said, all innocence. "And the North Pole's just ice, so what happens with Santa's toilets? They have to eat, and I guess they buy the food, but it's all water under the ice, and since it's below freezing, the poop wouldn't decompose too well…"

Mr. Mack's mouth was twitching. "I must admit, Joe," he said finally, "having you in my class has been a real learning experience. Okay, people, he's brought up a great problem. So. Let's start brainstorming…"

Disaster averted. Joe heaved a sigh of relief, as next to him, Tony snickered, and the class started trying to solve the problem of Santa's toilets.

But, after class, hearing from Kris what had happened with that retarded kid, Tina, though…Joe wanted to punch Angie out, girl or no girl. Poor Tina couldn't help that she'd been born that way. Ignoring her would've been bad enough, and Angie could've just kept quiet about the whole thing, but to _tell_ Tina that awful stuff to her face?

Weird, though. Hearing what Kris had done — giving Tina her Secret Santa crystal — made Joe feel good, too. Proud of her, in some weird way. Luckily, Sharon hadn't taken it bad, since it had been Sharon's gift, though Kris didn't know that; Sharon had seemed just as angry as Kris was.

Fine. If that…that…_witch_…Angie was going to act like that, then Joe would help Kris make up for it. He couldn't short Iola, not without an explanation that would start Iola making googly-eyes at him, but someone like Tina would probably be happy with simple things like cookies and candy.

So…a bit of charm and fast-talk Aunt Gertrude, and that retarded girl would be the happiest kid at Bayport Middle School. Joe would make sure of that.

Finally, _finally_, the last bell rang in History. Joe shoved his books in his locker, bundled up in coat, gloves and hat while Frank waited next to his locker.

"You don't have to walk me home." Kris came up and opened her locker, just as Joe was finishing up. "Sharon said she'll wait for me. She's coming over for homework tonight. We don't know about Tina yet."

In the excitement of the impending mystery, Joe had forgotten about Kris's tutoring. He and Frank normally waited for her and did their homework until she was done, so they could all walk home together. But…oh, right…Sharon had mentioned something about going to Kris's place earlier.

"Going to talk about ghosts?" Frank said.

"Witches," Kris said, without a trace of a smile.

"Tag, it's _Christmas_, not Halloween," Joe said, grinning. Maybe the best gift he could've given her: a new friend.

"Tell that to Stewart Farrar," Kris said. "It's _icky._"

"Wait 'til Mr. Mack gets to dissecting frogs," Frank said.

"I don't see why anyone would want to be a witch, the way they describe it." Kris made a face. "It's all about getting naked and stuff."

Silence.

"That might be the grown-up reason right there," Frank said, deadpan.

"Ugh," Joe said. "Where did you learn that at?"

"New book. The author interviewed a real witch in England, and the witch told him everything about it." Kris hefted her book bag over her shoulder. "And yes, Frank, you can borrow it when I'm done."

Mar never restricted Kris's reading and didn't forbid any of the books in her house to Frank and Joe, either…something that had caused friction between Mar and Aunt Gertrude over some of those books, until Dad had stepped in solidly on Mar's side. But reading about people just getting naked? _Boring_. Joe shook his head. Why would Frank _want…_

"I'll come over your house to read it," Frank said, grinning, and Joe rolled his eyes at his brother. He should've guessed: witches were female, after all. Frank was getting more and more interested in girls and all that adult stuff. Joe couldn't see why — just because girls got fatter in certain places? — but Frank kept telling him he'd understand when he got older.

Still, reading that book over Kris's place — probably a good idea, boring or not. Aunt Gertrude would go ballistic if she caught Frank with it.

"Tell Mrs. Bell I said hi," Kris said as she shut her locker, and Frank and Joe grinned at each other.

Snow was falling thick and fast when they walked out and down the school steps. Joe grinned up at the sky, letting the snow hit his face. Perfect, just too perfect.

"What was that about Tina?" Frank said. "That's the retarded girl in your class, right?"

Good feeling gone. With a sigh, Joe told him what Kris had said, and by the time he finished, Frank's expression matched his.

"That went beyond mean," Frank said.

"Tell me about it," Joe said. "And you should've heard math class — Angie called Kris my 'ugly girlfriend', just because she thanked me for a Santa gift."

"Her whole family's a bunch of stuck-up jerks," Frank said. "Her dad's that rich lawyer."

"It gets worse." Joe pulled out the card that had been with the Old Spice.

Frank's breath hissed in when he saw the writing.

"I didn't show Kris," Joe said. "I was going to show Dad. And Mar."

"Joe, I don't think Angie wrote this."

"C'mon, she had to. Calling Kris my _girlfriend?" _Joe couldn't keep the indignation out of his voice. Kris was his friend and everything, but how anyone could think Joe was into all that gooey girl stuff…

"You're just assuming the card's referring to Kris. Angie didn't call Kris that until math class, according to you. After you saw the note, right? And how would Angie have gotten in your locker? Only me and Kris have the combination, and we wouldn't tell her."

And Sharon, but that made no sense, either. Joe scowled. "That means either you or Kris did it. You wouldn't. And Kris…"

"Yeah, that really makes no sense." Frank was silent a moment as they walked. "When Angie's crowd broke into Kris's locker, they forced the hinges."

"I didn't see anything like that." Joe shook his head. "It's like one of Tag's magic tricks, but I can't see her doing this."

"Unless she's trying to give you another mystery as a gift." Frank scowled at the card. "This looks like a guy's writing. Girls don't write like this. Even Kris doesn't."

Giving him another mystery…Joe scowled again. "So maybe she got with Chet or Tony and had them do it." Chet and Tony were the only two guys of the brothers' friends that Kris didn't have problems with: Chet because he was so totally unthreatening, and Tony because of his baby sister and large, chaotic Italian family who enveloped everyone in warmth, welcome, and food.

"Using that language?" Frank's scowl deepened. "I don't think so. I really can't see Kris using that word, either. Not to you."

Well… "Frank, Sharon knows my combination, too. I gave it to her so she could leave Santa stuff for Kris…"

"Sharon? That makes even less sense — oh. If someone gave her the package to leave, you mean."

"She said she didn't see them," Joe said.

The brothers walked in silence for a long moment, boots crunching on snow and ice. "The only other solution I keep coming back to," Frank said, even slower, with that 'thinking' look on his face, "is that Kris did leave it, for another mystery. Maybe she was trying to sound evil, like a real criminal. She might've been using words she heard her original parents use."

"That doesn't make me feel any better," Joe said. He would show it to Dad anyway.

"Me, neither," Frank said.

The walk to Bayport's town square was cold and damp, and both Joe and Frank were snow-covered and shivering despite their coats and scarves, by the time they got to Bell Book and Candle. More snow was on the way, definitely; Joe could taste it in the air.

They stood in the entryway a few minutes, brushing snow off and stomping their boots so they wouldn't track snow all over the tile. Mrs. Bell was at the cash register; she looked up at the jangle of the bell and smiled over at the boys. A line of customers were waiting to check out.

"Hot chocolate's there, boys," she called, nodding at the table near the counter. She placed two mugs, a bag of marshmallows, and a box of candy canes within reach of the carafes and hot plates. "Help yourselves. I'll be with you as soon as Martha's back."

It didn't take long. The marshmallows were only slightly gooey by the time Mrs. Bell's daughter came back and took over; Mrs. Bell laughed as she saw Joe's mug, hung with three candy canes and piled with four marshmallows.

"Scamp. Luckily your brother and dad buy enough that I could feed you candy canes for a year and still have plenty left for the marshmallows." Mrs. Bell smiled at Frank, who'd already accumulated a stack of four books as they'd waited — which would have to wait until after Christmas. Dad enforced a _no-buying-books-except-for-gifts_ on Frank to make sure that he didn't buy something he'd potentially get as a gift. "Let's take this to the back. Frank, are those gifts, or for your wish list?"

Frank sighed. "Wish list."

"I suspect someone's going to spend all of January reading," Mrs. Bell said, with an innocent look on her face as she led them to the stockroom. "I heard Santa had his elves building bookshelves for you."

At that, Frank perked up; Joe made a face. Joe couldn't naysay Mrs. Bell, though. He had his gifts for Frank currently on hold with her, so Frank wouldn't find them at home.

The stockroom was small and cozy; it used to be the kitchen when old Mr. Gardner had owned the place. Almost all of the store's stock was on the shelves the moment it came in, but Mrs. Bell sometimes got more copies of a book than she had space for. The room was lined with shelves, the wood floor covered with a thick blue rug, a worn couch, a battered desk and the heavy iron safe. Along the back wall sat the fridge, an old gas stove, cupboards. Sometimes the whole store smelled of pot roast, chowder, or spaghetti sauce, especially during the Christmas season, when Mrs. Bell stayed at the store all hours.

Mrs. Bell gestured them to the couch and sat at the desk. "Did Kris tell you what was going on?"

"Only that stuff was missing, ma'am," Frank said.

"It was _cool,_" Joe said. "She did these envelopes like _Mission Impossible_ and they even self-destructed when we read them — uh — sorry." Mrs. Bell was vocal about her dislike of TV.

She only laughed. "_Mission Impossible,_ huh? Well, it's not quite that drastic. Things have been going missing around here, things we can't explain. Books — that's the biggest worry — markers, a transistor radio. My staff mug, from this room. Brown-bag lunches, a couple times. A box of Christmas decorations, and some of the ones we've put out have gone missing, too. Our petty cash box disappeared this weekend, and we still haven't found it."

"Shoplifters?" Frank said.

Mrs. Bell shook her head. "Ordinarily I'd agree with you, but these are books that normally aren't targeted by shoplifters. Usually that's just paperbacks, fiction. Light and easy to carry. Something that someone can tuck under their jacket and walk out with. These…" She hesitated.

"Have you tried the police?" Joe said.

"I'm not sure what I'd tell them," Mrs. Bell said. "There's no sign of anyone having broken in. The doors are all locked. I can't be sure it's not one of us simply misplacing some of the items, or maybe even a shoplifter, but this doesn't fit either of those patterns."

"You said the books aren't those normally taken by shoplifters…?" Frank said.

Mrs. Bell nodded. "Several out of the Religion section, if you can believe that. We had a big, gorgeous coffee-table book on the Book of Kells — gone."

"I remember that one," Frank said. "I was going to get that for Kris, because it looks like one of her fairy-tale books…but it's _gone?"_

Joe whistled. That had been a big book, easily the size of a TV tray, with full-color, glowing pictures of ancient illuminated manuscripts. Kris normally had a real problem with church stuff, but she and the brothers had all ooh'd and ahh'd over that particular book when it'd come in last month at the store.

"It wasn't bought," Mrs. Bell said. "I would've remembered, and it would've been marked off on the stock list. I've gone over the whole store and had my staff on the lookout for it — nothing. There's Bibles missing, too. Other odd books, from other sections. 'Piecemeal' is the best way I can put it."

Joe and Frank looked at each other. Joe hadn't expected something like this — this was a real mystery!

"Here's the odd thing," Mrs. Bell said. "Sometimes the books have come back. We'll find them behind the counter, with the returns to be re-shelved, and I know I didn't put them there. Martha claims she didn't, and I can't see why my other people wouldn't simply tell me."

"Maybe they want to borrow them," Joe said.

"No. We have a loan policy. Anyone on staff can keep any book in the back room to read." Mrs. Bell smiled at Joe's expression. "Young man, anyone who works in a book store loves books. How else do we stay familiar with our stock unless we read it?"

"Other stuff's missing, too, Joe," Frank said. "How much was in the cash box?"

"Twenty five, maybe thirty dollars. No more than that. The transistor radio was always up front, under the register. The markers were a brand-new box — we'd bought two boxes of them, in fact, to make new posters for the windows, and one disappeared from the bag. We hadn't even opened the boxes yet." She sighed.

"How long has this been going on?"

"We started noticing it the last week or so," Mrs. Bell said. "At least, noticing that it's a problem. Anything before that…" She reddened, just a little. "You might have heard stories about our resident ghost. Well…we just chalked any oddities up to Mr. Bell, before."

Joe had heard the stories, in lots of spooky detail, from Kris. Mr. Bell had died in the Korean War and supposedly haunted the store, someone watching the customers, someone who'd vanish if you turned to look at him directly. Ghosts being impossible aside, Joe had no idea why Mr. Bell would haunt someplace he'd never been; his wife hadn't bought the building until after he'd died.

"Ma'am, I've got an idea," Frank said slowly. "Maybe Joe and I could spend a night or two here in the store. Over the weekend, I mean, not a school night."

Mrs. Bell smiled. "Of course, getting to spend the night in a book store has nothing to do with it."

Frank shook his head. "No, ma'am. Maybe whoever's doing it is stealing the stuff in broad daylight, but I don't think so, not with you and Martha and everyone always around the counter and in sight of the door. They'd have to be getting in here at night, when no one's around."

"Huh." Mrs. Bell studied Frank for a long moment.

"If we do that," Joe said, grinning; Mrs. Bell could eyeball Frank as long as she wanted — Frank was a master of the blank face, "I say we have Kris with us. Give her a camera and she can do a ghost hunt…um…and help us watch the store," he added when Mrs. Bell turned that look on him. "She's so little, she can hide real easy. The thief wouldn't expect that."

"If it was anyone but you and Joe, I'd ordinarily say 'no' outright," Mrs. Bell said to Frank. "Since it is you two, it is a good plan. But…if Kris is involved, I do have to say no. Two boys, one girl. It's not proper. I know she's like your sister and all, but still."

"We can leave Kris out of it," Frank said, giving Joe a quick glare.

Kris had just given them this awesomely cool Christmas gift, a real mystery to solve…and now, an opportunity for a ghost hunt? It was too good a gift in return for Joe to let it go. "How about if we get another girl with us? To chaperone?"

"Well…" Mrs. Bell said slowly. "I guess. It depends on the girl."

"I don't think Callie would," Frank said, but Joe shook his head.

"Not Callie. Or Iola," he added quickly, in case Frank got ideas. "Sharon." Frank's face lit up, and Joe grinned. "Sharon Anderson," Joe said, to Mrs. Bell. "She's Kris's friend, and her mom's a deacon at First United. Would that make it okay?"

Mrs. Bell nodded. "I know her. She's another good customer of mine." She thought a moment. "Very well. That would be fine. Call me once you have permission from your parents, and we can arrange things for Friday night."


	7. Questions

Tutoring was actually one of the best parts of school this year, Kris had to admit that. Even though her tutor was a man — Mr. Mack — he was unthreatening and goofy enough both outside his head and inside it that it was impossible to be scared of him. There were only a couple other kids in the same session, so he could give them lots of help, and Kris could focus better without a whole class whispering, muttering, and _thinking_ all around her.

Mr. Mack helped her untangle the long multiplication problems and showed her a couple shortcuts that made much more sense when _he_ explained it, instead of Mr. Gregory. As Mr. Mack turned to help Julie, a seventh grader, with diagramming sentences — something Kris didn't understand at all — Kris caught sight of Iola sitting on the hall floor, just outside the door.

"Miss the bus, Iola?" Mr. Mack said.

"No, sir." Iola blushed. "I'm waiting to talk to Kris."

"Which means you did," Mr. Mack said dryly. "Come in and have a seat. You can get your homework done while you wait."

"I'm walking home with Sharon," Kris said shyly, to Iola. "If you want to walk with us, you can call your mom from my house."

Iola dimpled at her and slid into the desk closest to the door. "That's okay. Mom's picking me up so we can go shopping." She didn't pull out any homework books, but Kris caught a glimpse of a white-cover paperback before Iola hid it inside her English textbook — _Love Story_.

Kris scowled. An adult book, about all the boy-girl stuff. What was it with the other girls and that awful stuff?

Maybe they didn't know what it really meant.

Mama and Papa had ranted about such things. They'd called her names over it, though Kris'd had no idea what they'd meant. Until Papa…

Wiping at her face, Kris focused on the math text book and the problem she was supposed to be working on, forced herself to breathe slowly, in and out and to get her mental shields firmed up. She didn't need to have a meltdown here.

By the time tutoring was over, Kris's head felt stuffed full, and on the verge of one of her sick headaches. Mr. Mack gave her a couple aspirin and let her stay in the classroom until the pain receded enough for her to see straight. He offered to call Mar for her, but Kris shook her head. Once she was outside, she'd be fine; cold air always helped. By then, Sharon had shown up, eyeing Iola dubiously as Iola stuffed her books back in her pack.

"Those headaches sound awful," Iola said to Kris. "You really see halos around everyone?"

"Uh-huh," Kris said. "Even Joe."

Iola giggled. "Joe with a halo? You should tell Frank."

"I did," Kris rubbed at her eyes; light still hurt, at the moment, "and they decided that made Joe a saint and Joe wrote a letter to the Pope asking to be…um…shot out of a cannon…"

"Canonized," Mr. Mack said, grinning. "It's not that fun. It just means added to the Catholic Church's list of official saints. I'd love to know what Joe said his miracles were."

Kris shook her head again. Papa had ranted against the Catholic Church as being nothing but pagan idolators and the Pope being Satan in disguise, but Mar was Catholic, sort of, and _she_ didn't worship idols. While Frank and Joe were Methodist, a lot of their relatives were old-fashioned Irish Catholic, and they definitely didn't act like Papa had claimed Catholics acted.

"Saint Joe," Iola giggled again. "Patron saint of headaches. Both him and Frank!"

"I can definitely see that," Mr. Mack said.

"My dad's a doctor," Sharon said, as Kris shouldered her backpack. "Maybe he can figure out why you get them."

"Something about sugar in my blood." Kris hadn't understood the explanation; it'd been tied in with her mind-Gifts, somehow. "_Shimá_ took me up to Boston about it, but the drugs they want me to use are pretty dangerous. _Shimá_ doesn't want me taking them until I'm older."

"Ergotamine, probably." Mr. Mack put his papers back in his briefcase. "Your mom's right. It's made from a poisonous fungus that grows on wheat. In medieval times, people would eat their Wheaties, then go into convulsions or have hallucinations, and you'll never guess what they blamed for it."

"Um, witches?" Kris said.

Mr. Mack "fired" his finger at her. "You got it. Ignorant people are sadly predictable." He grinned. "My class is crazy enough without a fungus among us."

It was a teacher joke, so it wasn't really funny, but on cue, all three girls groaned as they left the classroom.

"Mommy swears by hot water and a washcloth whenever she has a headache," Iola said to Kris.

"_Shimá _has me trying ginger and chamomile." Kris rubbed at her forehead again. "It doesn't work too well. I'll try the hot water when I get home."

"I wish we could get hold of some of that fungus," Sharon muttered. "Put it in Angie's lunch. I'd love to see her have a hallucination."

"Angie?" Iola sounded startled. "You mean Angie Thompson? Why?"

Kris looked down. Iola was on the junior cheerleader squad, too, just like Angie. But Iola was Chet's sister, and Chet was Frank and Joe's best friend. Kris didn't want to make her big brothers mad at her.

"She told Tina that she wasn't getting her any Secret Santa stuff because she was a retard," Sharon said flatly. "Because she didn't want to waste the money."

Iola stopped. "Angie said that? But she's nice."

"That's what Tina said." Kris scuffed her boot on the floor. Angie? _Nice?_ But Iola sounded as if she totally believed it. "She told me so in Special Ed."

"Tina must've not heard her right," Iola said. "Or she misunderstood."

"Yeah, right," Kris muttered. She really didn't want to start trouble. Not here. Not now. Not over this.

"Tina's just slow," Sharon said, with a glare at Kris. "There's nothing wrong with her hearing."

"I didn't mean that," Iola said. "It's just that she's not all there, everyone knows that. You can't really believe what the poor thing says, that's what Mom says."

Kris raised her head. No one had ever believed her, either. Until Mar.

"Uh-huh," Sharon said, with heat. "All that means is Angie can get away with it, because no one will believe Tina."

"Oh, come on," Iola said.

"Angie's _mean_," Kris said, the words spilling from her before she could stop them. "Unless you think spraying rotten milk all over someone's locker is _nice._"

"That was just a joke. All the new kids got hazed. Everyone does it. Chet got baby powder all over his last year."

"None of Angie's crowd got hazed," Sharon said. "And she's just as new as the rest of us are."

"I got F's that day because all my homework got soaked," Kris said. "And _Shimá_ had to pay for three textbooks. That's a _joke?"_ She'd never understand these people, never!

"I'm sure Angie wouldn't have done that if she knew your homework was still there," Iola said reasonably. "Most of us take it home with us."

"And telling Tina to her face that she's a retard and not getting any Santa stuff is _nice_, too?_"_

"Kris, you're over-reacting," Iola said. "It's not like Tina really knows what the Santa thing's all about. She probably doesn't understand it at all. People like her don't feel things like we do."

Tears were threatening to spill again. Kris blinked rapidly, somehow swallowed them down. She wasn't going to cry, she wasn't, not here, not in the hallway, not in front of Iola and Sharon, she wasn't!

"I think Tina understands a lot more than you think she does," Sharon said, scowling.

"Look, you're really getting angry over nothing," Iola said, turning her back on Sharon to face Kris. "I just wanted to ask about Joe, that's all."

This was the girl who said she was doing a cake for Kris's birthday to make up for what had happened last year. Chet's sister. Someone who'd called her 'the greatest'. But right now, Kris didn't feel so great. "Joe didn't think the milk was a _joke_. And he got angry over Tina, too. You wouldn't tell _him_ he was over-reacting."

"That's different," Iola said, reddening.

…_I only got Kris Mountainhawk, she's weird, let's ignore her…_

Kris swallowed, hard. "No. It's the same. The only difference is that it's Joe, not me. Or Tina."

"Look, are you going to help me with Joe or not?"

Kris said nothing for a few minutes, as they walked out the front doors. Snow was falling thick and hard, and the janitors hadn't gotten around to salting the walks yet; the stairs were slick and icy, and Kris took extra care going down them. At the bottom of the stairs, she turned her face up, let the flakes fall on her face, their cool touch helping her calm down.

This was about Joe, after all, not Tina. Just give Iola her ideas, so Joe could have something special from the whole Secret Santa nonsense. That was the important thing. "He really likes Christmas Rose," Kris muttered. "The flower. It was his mom's favorite. But he said he's not good with plants."

Now Sharon was scowling at her.

Iola smiled, dimpling again. "That's easy. I'll ask Mrs. Cohen about it. She can get anybody to grow stuff. She even helped Chet grow mint for his science project!"

Mint was almost impossible to kill anyway, but Kris kept her mouth shut.

"Joe was teasing Kris about wanting to learn magic," Sharon said slowly. "Something about getting back at her for the envelope." She cocked her head at Kris. "I didn't know you knew magic."

"Joe always says that," Kris said, turning red. She really didn't want to go into that. "He's still trying to get flash paper to work without setting off the fire alarm."

"Oh, that gives me a _great _idea!" Iola said. "I should've thought of that. Frank said something about that to Chet, too. There's Mommy —" The Mortons' station wagon had pulled in front of the school.

"Just don't get him any more Old Spice," Kris said.

Iola halted. "Huh?"

"Old Spice. He really hates it." Joe had griped about his Uncle Jack enough; Kris understood completely. She couldn't stand the stuff, either, because of Papa.

Iola looked confused; behind her, Sharon was shaking her head. "Um, okay, sure," Iola said. "Whatever you say. See you tomorrow!" She scrambled up the hill to the car.

"That was kind of rude." Sharon was still scowling, as they started walking again. The sidewalks had been shoveled, but the way the snow was coming down, it wouldn't make any difference. "I mean, you shouldn't insult people's gifts like that. Even if they are cheerleaders."

Kris looked down, her face hot. She hadn't meant it like that; she'd just been trying to let Iola know. "But Joe really does hate it."

Sharon said nothing, looking at her from time to time as they walked. Then, "You were going to let her get away with the whole Tina thing. You wouldn't have said anything if I hadn't."

"She didn't care," Kris muttered, still staring at the sidewalk. Her head was hurting again. "You heard her. And if I got her mad, she would've told Angie, and Angie would've done more bad stuff to Tina."

"Or you, you mean."

Abruptly the day plummeted straight to _miserable._ Kris stopped. "So? I'm sick of people doing bad stuff to me. I hate them laughing at me behind my back and calling me names and playing dirty tricks. I hate being an _ugly little_ _dummy._"

"That doesn't mean you suck up to them," Sharon said, but she sounded troubled.

"I wasn't!" Kris's voice had risen. "I give up. I try to do something good, and all I get is _more_ people hating me. Frank and Joe are the only people who _don't_ and all I want is to do something nice for them and…and…"

Sharon was staring, her eyes wide, tear-filled.

Kris couldn't take it anymore. She turned and started running down the street, towards home. She'd tried, she'd really tried, and she couldn't even do friends right…

"_Kris! _ _Wait!" _

Kris ignored it, kept running…until her feet hit a patch of ice and skidded out from under her. She slammed into the sidewalk, the air knocked from her lungs, and she lay there, wheezing and fighting to breathe.

Somewhere behind her, peals of laughter burst out.

It was just too much. Somehow she got one lungful of air, then two, and Kris struggled to her elbows, still wheezing. Everything hurt; her entire chest felt bruised, her head pounded, her ankle burned. Now her coat was ripped, her pants torn…then she saw her backpack, and moaned, tears starting for real. The seam had split, and the new math book, the one _Shimá_ had paid for, had fallen out, pages down, right into the snow and mud.

"Oh my gosh." Footsteps came up; Sharon squatted down by her. "Here." Sharon helped her up, then picked the math book up, brushed it off. Her face was red, tear-streaked, but she glared up, somewhere behind Kris. "Idjits. They wouldn't be laughing if they fell."

"Leave me alone!" Kris snatched the math book from Sharon's hands; hot tears blinded her. "You're just like all them. You're just being nice so you can turn around and be mean later! Just like them!"

"I thought _you_ were just like them," Sharon said, "but you're not, are you?"

Kris only grabbed at the abused backpack, shoved the math book back inside. Right now she just wanted to get home.

"What didn't they believe you about?"

That pulled Kris up short. "Huh?"

"Back there." Another of those weird, uncomfortable stares. "When Iola said that about Tina. That's what you were thinking."

Kris flushed. She still didn't have very good control over her shields, especially when she was upset; she wasn't about to tell Sharon about her original parents. "Nothing," Kris muttered, and grabbed her pack up. Her chest still hurt, her ankle was sore, and her knees were bleeding where her pants had torn, but she should be able to manage…then Kris stopped.

Sharon still watched her.

Thinking about it, Sharon had told Iola about the Joe and the envelope, and Kris hadn't thought Sharon was anywhere around after math class. "If you're reading me," Kris snapped, "then you really are like _them_, because you're just using me to make yourself feel important." With that, she started walking — limping, anyway. Her ankle just barely bore her weight. Between that and her pounding head, all she wanted to do was get home.

Footsteps behind her. Sharon caught up, then slowed to match Kris's pace. "Usually people just call me a weirdo."

"You're not," Kris said. "You're just as much a bully as…as Angie is."

Sharon reddened. "Like I can help it," she muttered. "You were awfully loud."

"So _shield!"_

Silence.

Sharon wiped at her face. "Everyone else tells me I'm lying when I say this stuff. You…you're getting mad because I'm not doing it right, and I had no idea I was doing it _wrong."_

"Well, you _are." _But then Kris's brain caught up and what they'd been talking about finally got past the sore chest and burning ankle and hurting head and ripped pants and ruined textbook — Kris turned to stare at Sharon. "Um…you do it, _too?"_

Wide-eyed, Sharon nodded.

And Sharon had said she saw ghosts. She'd known about Abby. She'd believed Kris's story about the elves and fairies…

"I usually can't…um…read you," Sharon said, reddening again. Then the words tumbled out. "There's something that feels like I'm hitting a wall when I try. Joe's kinda the same way, a little, but his isn't like yours. It's like someone else's slapping my hands away."

_Joe_…?Kris opened her mouth, shut it. No way. Joe and Frank were too _everything-has-to-make-sense; _they didn't think any of the Gifts were real. Other words spilled out instead. "Do your mom and dad know?"

Well, that was probably the stupidest thing she could've said. Look what'd happened with her parents.

Sharon shrugged. "Mom says I'm making it up." She looked down, scuffed at an ice patch. "I heard her and Dad yelling. Dad said something about…psycho…no…schizo…schizophrenia. Crazy."

Mouth dry, Kris swallowed. Too much to deal with right now.

"When you opened Tina's locker," Sharon said, "you did something, then, too. But I thought it was just the magic trick Joe was talking about." Sharon cocked her head. "You know magic stuff, too?"

Kris shook her head. "Not like that. C'mon. We're gonna talk to _Shimá._"


	8. Answers

**_A/N: Thanks for the reviews, folks! I'm dedicating this tale to Chy Johnson & Carson Jones of Queen Creek, Arizona - Google 'em to read the whole heartwarming story...and have your faith restored in humanity._**

**_Note for non-US readers: "Old Spice" is a popular cheap men's aftershave (cologne) that's been around since the 1930s. _**

—

Joe was almost dancing as he and Frank left Bell Book and Candle — despite the Santa gift thing, the whole day was awesome, wonderful, totally _killer_. They'd been asked — no, hired!_ — _to solve a real mystery, just like real detectives!

"Sometimes you're positively brilliant, you know that?" Frank said, grinning at Joe.

"Wow, he admits it," Joe said to the open air and falling snowflakes. "My brother finally realizes that I'm the real genius of the family."

The snowball caught him square in the back of the head.

The gleeful snowball fight lasted all the way home, and snow was falling hard enough that Joe felt like he was in the middle of a shaken-up snow-globe. He stopped for a moment, admiring their weathered, old stone house. Dad's car was in the driveway; he must have finished up the last case faster than he'd thought. Dad had finally gotten the clunky red and blue lights up to outline the front porch, door, and garage, with the newer, smaller multi-color lights entwined in the bushes; the big plastic Santa Claus blinked on and off on the porch. A pine wreath hung on the front door, pine roping was twisted around the porch posts and decked the old stone wall running the length of the driveway, and electric candles shone in all the front windows.

Frank and Joe ran into the open garage, to stomp off their snowy boots onto the rubber mat right outside the garage-entry door; the new snow-blower smelled 'hot' and dripped melted snow — Joe had noticed that all the sidewalks on their side of the street had been blown clean. Dad must've gotten done real early, to have done so much.

Finally, the boots were de-snowed, and they went in, stopping on yet another mat to get their coats off. Dad stood in the kitchen doorway, drinking a steaming cup of coffee. The house smelled of rosemary-roasted chicken and cornbread stuffing, and Aunt Gertrude was on her Christmas-music kick: Burl Ives's "Holly Jolly Christmas" was playing on the stereo.

Aunt Gertrude poked her head into the living room; she'd moved in during Mom's long illness, to help Dad with "raising those boys right". "Close the garage before you get your boots off," she warned, before the brothers moved off the mat; a red-and-green apron covered in flour smudges was wrapped around her waist. "Dinner's in an hour. What's all this about Bell Book and Candle?"

"We've got a mystery to solve," Joe burst out, before Frank could. "A real mystery! We're real detectives now!"

"Two of them," Frank said. "But we need help with one. Joe, show Dad the card."

"Two of them?" Dad said, raising an eyebrow. He was a middle-aged man, graying temples, and a real, professional detective. Both Frank and Joe wanted to be detectives, too, just like Dad, but Dad refused to let them help with his work, saying they were too young. Even more unfair, Dad got real evasive when Joe tried to pin him down on exactly when he and Frank could start helping. "When you're older" could mean _anything._

"This detective nonsense is not healthy at your age," Aunt Gertrude said, as she scraped biscuit dough onto the floured board. "You're too young — stop that." She whacked his knuckles with the rubber spatula, as Joe was reaching for the cookie plate. "After dinner, young man. Not before."

_Grown-ups._ Joe had already resolved to remember all this if he ever had kids, and he'd be tons more fair to them than Dad and Aunt Gertrude were to him and Frank.

Still, if Joe and Frank could prove to Dad that they could do it, if they solved whatever was going at Bell Book and Candle, maybe Dad would relent.

Once in the kitchen and ensconced at the table with hot chocolate, Joe brought out the card and the Old Spice box and set them on the table; he'd wrapped it all in his handkerchief, so he wouldn't ruin any fingerprints. As Joe explained what had happened, Dad scowled at the card, then looked over the box and bottle, not touching either.

Aunt Gertrude looked over Dad's shoulder to read the card, and gasped. "Oh my heavens. Fenton, you need to have a word with his teacher. I knew the school was asking for trouble with this whole Secret Santa thing."

"Before I say anything, boys," Dad said, "look at the box and the bottle. Just look. What can you tell me about it?"

"It sloshes a lot," Joe said promptly. He'd noticed that when he was examining it before math class. "It felt kinda empty. And there's dried gunk around the nozzle." Bad enough getting _aftershave_ from his Secret Santa, but getting it used…? Along with that note…

"The box is old," Frank said. "The top printing is rubbed off and the corners are all worn white. So it's been used."

"I was going to check it for fingerprints, Dad," Joe added. "That'd rule out Kris and Sharon, if Sharon'll let me print her."

"Maybe we can print your whole class," Frank said.

"Let's not go that far," Dad said. "I don't think Kris gave you this — where would she have gotten a used bottle of Old Spice?"

"Maybe Sharon got it from her father," Joe said, then frowned, thinking. "No, wait…he'd notice that, if a bottle of his aftershave went missing."

"The handwriting on that card looks male," Frank said.

"And you're a handwriting expert, of course," Dad said, smiling.

"Well, not really, but…"

"No 'buts'," Dad said firmly. "Handwriting can be disguised."

Frank and Joe exchanged looks.

"However," Dad went on, "there's limited access to your locker, Joe. So either one of the girls left it, someone else had them leave it, _or_…"Dad raised his voice just enough override Joe's protest, "someone found out the combination _from_ them. What Sherlock Holmes said, remember — when you've ruled out the impossible…"

_When you've ruled out the impossible, whatever's left, however improbable, is the truth. _Joe opened his mouth, not seeing how…then sank back in his chair when he remembered. "I wrote it down for Sharon. Both mine and Kris's."

"There you go. Someone might have stolen that piece of paper. So our first solution is to buy you both new combination locks. And we'll tell Mar, so she'll do the same for Kris, and _none_ of you three tell anyone what the new combinations are. Not even each other."

"But Kris has that trouble with Angie, Dad —"

"Then maybe it's time your little tagalong stood up to that spoiled brat on her own," Dad said sternly.

Joe exchanged scowls with Frank. That wasn't any fair. Angie had all her friends, and Dad had no clue how mean those girls got.

"First step, though," Dad said, "is we ask Mar and Kris to come over so we can show them this."

"Fenton," Aunt Gertrude said, "do you think that's wise? That card might scare Kris too badly."

"Forewarned is forearmed," Dad said. "But we can also find out if Kris is just giving you another mystery, Joe, and if she is, we can explain to her why this was a bad idea. Or if she put the package there for someone else — in which case, then we'll know who asked her. Same with Sharon. I'll call her dad."

"Dad, I don't want to get them in trouble!"

"You won't," Dad said gently. "At worst, Kris just imitated a bad pulp-detective novel. You wouldn't be angry if it was her, would you?"

Mutely, Joe shook his head. Kris had problems figuring out friend-stuff sometimes; both Frank and Joe still had to explain a lot to their little tagalong. Things they took for granted would completely confuse her, and sometimes she was rude but didn't realize it, or understand why.

"It's the fault of whoever did that package, Joe, if it wasn't Kris," Frank said.

That was another big problem, if whoever did it thought Kris or Sharon might've tattled. "Let me fingerprint it before you call Kris," Joe begged Dad. "I can tell if Kris touched it, at least. If she didn't, then we don't have to sound like we're accusing her of doing the package."

Smiling, Dad ruffled Joe's hair. "Now that's thinking it through. Okay. So what's this about _two_ mysteries?"

"Bell Book and Candle," Aunt Gertrude sniffed, as she pulled the chicken out of the oven. "Joe, it's your turn to set the table."

The full explanation and what Mrs. Bell had told them took up most of dinner, and from there, Joe also went into what Kris had said about Tina.

At that, Aunt Gertrude clucked her tongue. "Poor child. You can certainly have cookies for her, Joe. I have a spare snowman tin, too. She'd probably like that."

"We can talk with everyone else, too," Frank said, to Joe. "You know Callie'd want to do something, and I'll bet Tony would, because of his baby sister. And Iola's in your class, too."

"She's friends with Angie, though," Joe said, scowling. "Because they're cheerleaders." It was only middle-school basketball, which no one cared about, but you couldn't tell any of those girls that.

"With someone like Tina," Dad said, "it doesn't have to be anything big. Don't overdo it. Simple things will work just as well, as long as you're sincere about it."

"Kris said she invited Tina over tonight," Joe said, as he spooned more gravy onto his second helping of mashed potatoes. "I was going to go over, too, and take some cookies…um…" He fidgeted under Aunt Gertrude's gaze.

"She really did, Aunt Gertrude," Frank said. "I heard her say it. Joe'll need tons of cookies for everyone."

Joe kicked his brother under the table. He didn't need the help, not with _that_ expression on Aunt Gertrude's face. "Both Tina and Sharon, Kris said. I was thinking that if I find out what else Tina likes, I can help Kris with her Santa stuff."

"The world'll end. My baby boy is _planning."_ Dad smiled fondly at Joe. "Now…about Bell Book and Candle. You can certainly spend a night or two there, as long as it's not a school night. You'll have to ask Mar and Bill and Connie about their daughters, though."

"We will, Dad," Joe said. Bill and Connie Anderson were Sharon's parents; her dad was their family doctor.

"It worries me, Fenton," Aunt Gertrude said. "That missing cash box. What if someone is breaking into that store? Children shouldn't take the place of the police."

"We'll call here every half-hour or so, I promise," Frank said. "And if we let Chief Collig know we're there, he can have a couple of his men check in on us, too."

"If someone was breaking in, Mrs. Bell would've noticed," Dad said to Aunt Gertrude. "I think they'll be safe enough, especially with what Frank said." He pushed away from the table. "While the boys are cleaning up…" Dad grinned again at Frank and Joe, "…I'll go talk to Mar."

"I'll handle cleanup," Aunt Gertrude said. "Let the boys go with you. That way they're not pestering Kris for whatever you and Mar find out."

Aunt Gertrude, offering to do their chores? Joe blinked, then started grinning.

"Just this once, mind," Aunt Gertrude said to him.

At that point, the phone rang; Dad picked it up with a "hello", listened for a moment, then held it out to Frank and Joe; Joe took it. "It's Kris."

"Joe! Tina's here, and Sharon — _Shimá_ called their moms and they all came over for dinner." Kris's words tumbled over each other, before Joe even got his own 'hello' out. "Mar said if your dad and aunt come over, too, there'll be enough for a decent hand of five-card stud…_Shimá!"_

Kris's voice abruptly faded to the background; the phone jostled a bit. "Joe, dear," Mar said, "put your dad or aunt back on, please."

"Um," Joe said to Dad, as he handed the phone over, "Mar came back on."

Aunt Gertrude was already putting cookies on a platter.

"We can take Tag to Green Earth and help her pick out some crystals," Frank said to Joe. "I bet Tina would go nuts over those."

Green Earth was a camper's store, but the owner was a rockhound. Joe nodded, thinking. He'd gotten Kris a good-sized hunk of a gorgeous amethyst geode for Christmas from there, fairly cheap — it'd originally been a _huge_ sparkling half-geode priced at over a hundred dollars, until a delivery man had accidentally knocked its stand over with the package dolly.

Dad hung up the phone. "Boys, come on. Mar's invited us all over. No, Joe, I'm sorry, there's no time to do fingerprints. Gert, just use the dishwasher for tonight. I _did_ buy it for that purpose."

Aunt Gertrude sniffed. "It's a waste of energy, Fenton. We have two perfectly good dishwashers right here."

Joe rolled his eyes; that really wasn't fair. When Aunt Gertrude had to clean up, she got to use the dishwasher, but when it was his and Frank's turn, the dishwasher "was a waste of energy".

But Aunt Gertrude finally relented. Dad picked up two big bags of M&Ms from the Christmas candy stash — "for the card game", he said, grinning — and Aunt Gertrude made Frank carry the cookie platter, after shooing Joe away from it twice.

Kris, Sharon, and Tina were in the living room, with several big bowls of bright colored salt-dough that they were shaping into funny, cartoony animals. Kris scrambled up to take coats as Mar welcomed the Hardy family inside; Joe helped her carry them upstairs to the spare bedroom — Mar's sewing room.

"We're making Nativity figures," Kris said to Joe. "Tina liked that wooden one _Shi cheii_ carved for me — um, that's Mar's dad, my new grandpa — so we're making her one." Kris made a face. "The grown-ups are playing cards in the kitchen, and Mar says we're too young to learn poker."

"Maybe we can teach Tina cutthroat Uno," Joe said, grinning, then had Kris repeat the Navajo until he had it. He was trying to learn Navajo from Mar, but it was hard; according to Mar, the US used it as a code during World War II…and the Germans never broke it. He and Frank hadn't been able to find any books on that, which had gotten Mar muttering about "white folks writing us out of history again." Still, the idea of being able to speak in an unbreakable code sounded good and detective-ish. "When's Charlie coming in?"

"Day after tomorrow. _Shimá's_ going to get the tree tomorrow, so it'll be all decorated and everything when he gets here." Kris smiled. "So we're doing more decorations, too."

Joe couldn't stop grinning. He couldn't wait — he'd get to meet a real Indian warrior for Christmas, even if that warrior flew jet fighters instead of riding horses with bows and arrows. Somehow, the jet fighter just made it all cooler.

The Mountainhawk home smelled of pine and cedar, cornbread and chili, and Mar had the radio on — WVBF out of Boston, Joe realized, delighted, though Aunt Gertrude frowned when Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" came on. A fire crackled in the fireplace, and bowls of popcorn, peanut brittle, and chips were also spaced around the girls on the floor, along with bottles of root beer and cream soda. Frank was already helping Sharon figure out how to attach a salt-dough head to the body…which had Joe making gruesome, pretend-screaming sounds when Sharon finally drove a toothpick through the dough ball and into the torso.

At that point, the salt-dough Nativity threatened to become the Manson Family as Sharon, Frank, and Joe all tried to outdo each other in making horror-movie versions of the Nativity, until Kris reached over and firmly put the box of toothpicks between herself and Tina. Grinning, Joe went back to the kitchen to grab more soda for everyone; he came back to the living room, plopped down, grinning again when he saw the sheep Tina was working on. They looked like clumps of Fruit Loops with Cookie-Monster eyes.

"Sheep are white, you know," Joe said.

"N-n-not…m-my…sh-sheep," Tina said; her round dough-face bore an intense look of concentration as she used a toothpick to etch a mouth onto a cow's face. "W-w-white's _b-b-boring. _C-can…I…have…ch-ch-cho-co-late…c-c-cows?"

"Chocolate?" Confused, Joe looked at Kris.

"Brown cows," Kris informed him. "Brown cows give chocolate milk. Red cows do strawberry milkshakes."

"He's just a boy." Sharon rolled a small dough oval, placed it in a dough-manger. "He wouldn't know that."

"Yeah, Joe," Frank said, grinning. "Don't you know anything?"

"So that means green cows do mint milkshakes for St. Patrick's Day," Joe said, rolling his eyes.

"N-n-no, th-they…d-d-don't," Tina said. "Everyone…kn-kn-knows c-cows aren't…g-gr-green, s-s-si-silly."

Both Sharon and Kris giggled, and _Kris _giggling was rare enough that Joe stared at her…then Frank cracked up, and that did it. Joe lost it, then no one could stop laughing — every time they looked at each other, it set them off again. Tina had a wonderful laugh, loud and giddy, like a little kid, and it just made everything even funnier.

"Hey kids," Mrs. Collins — Tina's mom — stood in the hallway, speaking loud enough to be heard over the hysterics. "Your parents want to see you in the kitchen. I'll keep Tina company."

That cut the laughter cold with a verbal _thud._ Kris and Sharon looked at each other, then Kris looked at Joe and Frank, openly suspicious. "Okay. What'd you two do now?"

Joe got to his feet. "Another mystery. We need your help in figuring it out."

"A bad one," Frank added, as they passed Mrs. Collins. "Tag…um…it's really bad."

That made Kris stop.

"Come on back, girls," Mar said, from the kitchen. "It's serious."

Even Joe stopped at seeing the grim-faced adults. Sharon's mom and dad were there, too: Connie was short, plump, brown-haired, Bill tall and blonde, still getting established in his doctor practice. Neither were smiling.

The bottle of Old Spice and the box sat on the table, with the card beside it. Mar gave Dad and Aunt Gertrude a questioning look; Dad nodded.

"Kris, Sharon," Mar said gently. "We know the Secret Santa at school is supposed to be a secret, but this is too important to continue to be one. Did anyone ask either of you to place a gift in Joe's locker?"

Both girls shook their heads. "You mean that box?" Sharon said to Joe, and Joe nodded. "It was already there when I…um…I mean…" She reddened, glanced at Kris.

"When you what, Sharon?" Mar said, still calm, still gentle.

"I'm helping her with her Secret Santa," Joe said, before Sharon could open her mouth. "The person's…um…in one of my classes." Mar raised an eyebrow, then glanced at Kris, and Joe hurried on, "It's easier for me to sneak Sharon's gift to them than it is for her." Thankfully, not a lie. "Like a secret double agent."

"So you put your Santa gift in Joe's locker and the other one was already there," Dad said, and Sharon nodded. "You didn't see anyone? Notice anyone hanging around?"

Sharon shook her head. "Just everyone else."

"_Shiché'é," _Mar said to Kris, "this is serious. Did you place this stuff in Joe's locker?"

Kris shook her head, too.

"She didn't have any opportunity," Frank added. "She got in too late — she told me and Callie about the phone call from Charlie. I was at Joe's locker right before he left. I stayed there to watch Kris's locker because of Angie. Kris only got in hers. She got a Secret Santa gift, but she never got in Joe's."

"I'd already gotten it by then," Joe said.

"What was your gift, Kris?" Dad said.

Kris looked around at all the adults; trembling, she crossed her arms and looked down at the floor. "A quartz crystal. Um, I threw the card away, Mr. Hardy. It just said 'from your Santa'. I'm sorry. I didn't meant to do anything wrong —"

"You didn't," Dad said gently. "We're not angry at you, Kris. We're just trying to figure out who did this."

"I saw the rock," Joe said. "It was _killer."_

"You didn't show me," Mar said to Kris.

"I…um…gave it to Tina," Kris said. "After she told me what Angie Thompson said to her."

"She told me and Sharon about that in Mr. Mack's class," Joe said.

"Joe?" Kris said, in a small voice. "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Someone wrote something bad with that Old Spice," Joe said.

"Come here, squirrel." Mar placed a hand on Kris's shoulder when Kris got near the table. "You need to see this, and I'm sorry. Does the handwriting look familiar to you at all?"

Kris looked down at the card, gasped, backed up, then, before Mar could stop her, Kris turned and fled. Her footsteps pounded up the stairs, followed by a door slam.

Sharon had edged closer to see the card, and her eyes went wide.

Joe didn't care. He took off after Kris, Frank right at his heels. He'd recognized her expression.

Terror…


	9. Santa's Elves

**_A/N: Thanks for the reviews & follows, everyone! To answer the questions: "Shimá" is Navajo for "Mom" or "my mother", when the speaker is the daughter or son — Navajo words change based on the relationship of the speaker to the person in question. Kris doesn't know Navajo, just the family words; she uses "shimá" because of all the baggage she has with the word "Mama", due to the abuse her original parents put her through. _**

**_As for the dishwashing, I'm guessing you're referring to Leyapearl's awesome tale "Atmospheric Conditions" in her equally awesome "Encryption" series; my dishwashing crept in because of all the fun Leya has with hers. Also, while dishwashers were becoming common in the '70s, households that had them tended not to use them because they were energy-wastes & expensive to use; my parents always made us do dishes by hand, despite the dishwasher. Believe me, Aunt G's attitude is one that my parents and all my friends' parents had!_**

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She hadn't seen that, she hadn't, she _hadn't!_

Trembling under an overwhelming surge of betrayal and fear, Kris fled to her room, to her closet, slammed the door behind her so hard that the door nearly went off the track, and burrowed into the mound of blankets and pillows she'd piled inside it.

Kris knew Angie and her crowd didn't like her; she expected trouble from them. But to turn a holiday that everyone kept saying was all about peace and love into something mean and evil…

Into what Mama and Papa had always claimed it was.

…_whore…_

Huddling in the dark of her closet, Kris gave in to the tears and shock. That was what Mama and Papa had called her. That was all she was good for, Papa had said, because of the sin of Eve. That was what they were saving her from, not that he ever included himself in that saving.

But Iola _liked_ Joe. She wouldn't do that to him, would she? Unless someone _else_ had gotten into Joe's locker…

Bright, wonderful evening with two new friends and Frank and Joe, ruined, totally ruined.

"Tag?" Frank's voice sounded like he was in her doorway, then, when she didn't answer, he moved closer. "It's me and Joe." Noises right outside the closet door, the brothers settling down onto the carpet.

"There's no one out here, Tag," Joe said, from the other side of the closet door. "We won't let anyone hurt you."

Wiping at her face, Kris cracked the closet door open, just enough to see Joe and the bottom of Frank's socks.

"Hey," Joe said to her. Leaning back against her dresser, he picked at a piece of lint on the carpet. "What happened?"

"You recognized it," Frank said, muffled a bit by the closet door.

Kris shook her head hard.

"We know you didn't do it," Joe said. "But if you know who did, Dad wants to make 'em stop."

"I don't know," Kris whispered, hugging the pillows tight. "I don't know,_ I don't know!"_ She did know, that was the problem. They wouldn't believe her, because Iola was Chet's sister, and Chet was their best friend. They'd call Kris a liar, just like Mama and Papa had, just like the cops had, just like everyone else had…

"What don't you know?" Frank again. He always sounded so grown up, so calm.

She only shook her head harder, still hugging the pillows.

"Hey," Joe said, "c'mon, Tag. We'll believe you, no matter what."

"Except for ghosts and fairies," Frank said, a smile in his voice.

"Well, yeah," Joe said. "But even then, we know you see something. We just don't agree on what it is." His voice turned fierce. "Whoever put that in my locker's just _mean. _I'll believe you over them any day."

"But…but I know your combination," Kris said, fighting back tears. "They had to know it, so you'll blame _me _and I didn't…"

"Tag, c'mon," Frank said. "You wouldn't do something like that."

"Dad thinks they stole it off Sharon. I…um…gave her my combination to help her with her Santa." Joe picked at the carpet again. "He's gonna have us change all our locks."

"Is that why you're scared?" Frank said. "You think we'll get mad at you?"

Shaking her head, Kris closed her eyes, rocked back and forth. _Breathe. Focus on where you're at. _Give them something they might believe. "That word. The bad one. Papa used to…used to call…" She had to stop, swallowed hard, hugged the pillow harder.

Silence. She saw Joe looking towards his brother.

"A lot of adults use that word," Frank said. "I mean, the Pentecostals were out front of City Hall last week, and Preacher Bob was using it. And a lot of guys wear Old Spice."

"Uncle Jack does," Joe said.

"Uh-huh," Frank said. "So that doesn't mean that guy's here. Joe thought it might be Angie because of the _girlfriend_ thing, but we couldn't figure out how she got in his locker."

Kris knew a way; she'd done it with Sharon's and Tina's lockers, after all. She'd found out Sharon was Gifted, so there were probably others. _One in twenty_, Mar had said, when Kris had asked_. That's how many might have the potential._ What if Angie was, too? Or one of her friends? What if they'd read her head and found out about Papa? That'd explain how they'd gotten into Joe's locker. What if they found out she told about Iola and decided to get back at her?

Not that Frank and Joe would believe that. They just thought her Gift was 'magic tricks', like that Blackstone guy Mar had taken her to see last month.

"Is it okay if we tell Dad?" Joe said. "Dad can check with his NYPD buddies and see if that man's still in San Francisco. He did that when we were kidnapped last year."

Still not looking at him, Kris nodded.

"I'll check it for fingerprints, too," Joe said. "I'm gonna get the kit and we can print Sharon and even Tina."

As if that would help. If it was Angie's crowd, they outnumbered Kris easily. Even though they were girls and only sixth graders, Angie was pretty big. Fingerprints wouldn't protect Kris, no matter what Joe thought.

"Boys." Mar's voice, from somewhere near the doorway. "Let me talk to her alone, please."

Rustling sounds, as the brothers got to their feet. Kris heard Joe say something quiet to Mar, but Frank knelt in front of the door-crack and reached through, just enough to touch Kris's arm.

"We're your big brothers, Tag," Frank said, his eyes intense-blue, adult-serious. "We won't let anyone hurt you. That's what big brothers are for. Promise."

"Thank you," Kris whispered.

After the brothers left, Mar eased to sit right on the other side of the cracked-open closet door. There was the scratch of a match being lit, followed by the sweet smell of burning tobacco leaf.

"Beauty is before you," Mar said quietly. "Beauty is behind you. Beauty is below you. Beauty is above you. May it be beautiful all around you."

An invocations from the Navajo Night Chant, one of the major medicine ceremonies. Tears trickled down Kris's face again as she hugged the pillow tighter. Mar wasn't a medicine person, but her father was, and she'd picked up a lot from him.

"You're safe here, little squirrel," Mar said, still quiet, gentle, calm. "No one will hurt you."

Easy for her to say. Kris couldn't look at her.

"Soon you will be a woman." Mar eased into a more comfortable position, and set the bundle of tobacco leaf down into an abalone shell she'd brought upstairs. "Children must run, for they are not big nor strong enough to prevail, and running ensures they survive. But a woman must be brave. A woman must act with honor. To run from a shadow, from mere words on paper…" Mar's voice trailed off.

Kris hung her head.

Mar reached through the open crack and touched Kris's hand. "You were hurt badly. That you survived tells of your courage. But one who has been through what you have often has trouble telling a shadow from a true beast. Shadows can look convincingly like monsters, if one expects monsters behind every bush."

"I know who Joe's Secret Santa is." Kris's voice shook.

"Does that knowledge scare you?"

Nodding, Kris settled, breathing in the scent of the sweet smoke. "That word. Papa…Papa would call me that. Just…before…I mean…whenever he…" She had to stop. Breathe. She had to breathe. "And he wore Old Spice."

"You're scared he's here in Bayport."

"I don't know, _I don't know._ It makes no sense, _Shimá_." Great, now she sounded like Frank. "If it is, why Joe? Papa wouldn't know who Joe is."

"Likely it's not that man," Mar said, frowning. "From San Francisco to Bayport is an expensive move, just to chase down a child. Especially for such as those people."

Mar's calm helped Kris calm down, helped her think. "_We're nothing but white trash",_ Papa had ranted whenever he was drunk, "_poor white trash good for nothing but making more trash_." Poor was an understatement; they'd lived wherever Papa and Mama had been able to guilt-trip the landlords whenever Papa had an all-too-infrequent job, or they'd just move into an empty house and squat there, until they were found out…

Kris took another deep breath. "Iola has Joe's name. She's his Santa. And that makes no sense, either, _shimá._"

That frown deepened. Uh-oh.

"It can't be her, it can't." Kris tightened her grip on the pillow. "She talked with me after school. Sharon was there, she can tell you, too. Iola wanted help with what to get Joe and she wanted to get him nice stuff. I thought she did the Old Spice and I told her Joe hated it, but she didn't know what I was talking about."

"Fenton will talk to the Mortons, I'm sure," Mar said.

"_No!"_ Kris caught herself and lowered her voice. "_Shimá, _if he does that, then Iola'll know I told, and it'll get back to Angie, and she'll —"

"…and you'll stand up to that spoiled brat and let it be known what she did. You tell everyone how she's trying to poison Christmas for a little handicapped girl who wants only pretty rocks. Evil thrives when people keep it quiet, squirrel. Have you given no thought to how many others that brat may be bullying? What would happen if you all stood together?"

Kris looked down.

"You've already told Sharon and Joe," Mar said. "Did they get mad at you for it? I seem to see both of them downstairs, having fun with Tina just as you are."

"Joe said he'd tell Frank."

"And Frank is down there, too. The world is full of decent people. Sometimes all they need is support behind them — knowing someone else feels the same as you do can be a powerful impetus." Mar stood, opened the closet, and held out her hand. "Come. You've hidden enough."

Kris looked up. Mar was wearing her Implacable Indian Warrior face. Kris swallowed hard, and took Mar's hand, let Mar help her up…then Mar enveloped her in a long, tight hug.

"It's okay to be scared, _shiché'é."_ Mar rocked her back and forth, slow, warm, and comforting. "Being brave is being scared, but doing the right thing anyway."

Fighting not to cry, Kris said nothing, letting herself be rocked.

"You are brave, little squirrel. My brave, beautiful little squirrel-daughter." Then there was a smile in Mar's voice. "Oh, and you certainly have my permission to spend the night at Bell Book and Candle with Frank and Joe."

"Huh?"

That Implacable-Warrior face stretched into a full grin, as Mar released her. "They'll tell you."

Sometimes Mar could be annoying like that. But then Kris had a thought; she went over to the window sill, where she kept all her Arizona crystals, and chose one of the larger ones that had a fairly stable base. "_Shimá_…do you think _Shi cheii_ could send more crystals here before Christmas?"

"Call him tonight and ask," Mar said. "Or you can always wait until we go out there. I'm sure Tina wouldn't mind an after-New Year's gift." Then Mar tipped Kris's chin up, to look directly in her face. "One other thing, my daughter. That man and woman are no longer your parents. They don't deserve any such title or respect from you. _I'm_ your mother. That's what all that court stuff meant last year."

"But…"

"No buts," Mar said sternly. "Don't give them that power over you. No more 'Papa' or 'Mama' for them, hear? They're not." Then Mar smiled. "I'm a bit jealous that way."

That did it. Tears streaked her face again, and Kris threw her arms around Mar. "_Shimá," _Kris whispered.

"_Shiché'é," _Mar said, returning the hug. "Time to let the brave show, squirrel."

On the way back downstairs, Kris detoured to the bathroom to scrub her face with cold water so it wasn't so obvious she'd been crying, washed and dried the crystal to remove dust and fingerprints, then she rejoined the others. Sharon watched her, openly curious, but didn't say anything.

"Y-y-you…g-got sc-scared…K-Kris?" Tina said, as Kris sat back down next to her.

"I'm okay." Kris focused on the salt dough. She had Frank and Joe, her big brothers. They backed her against Angie; they knew about her original parents. For that matter, even Callie had smarted off to Angie that morning. And now Sharon, who'd joined in with giving Tina gifts to make up for Angie.

Mar was right, Papa — no, _no,_ the_ Joneses — _couldn't afford to come all they way out here; the old junky station wagon would barely make it across town, let alone across the country. But that left a big question: who?

"I g-get sc-sc-scared, t-t-too," Tina said. "M-M-Mommy…hugs m-me and-and I'm…n-not sc-scared anymore. D-does y-your…m-m-mommy hug y-you?"

"Yeah," Kris said quietly, "she does."

"Her mom's an Indian, Tina," Joe said. "Like Tonto and Tiger Lily."

Joe and his Indian-craziness. Kris mock-glared. "Don't let _Shimá_ hear you say that. She'll scalp you. Tonto was Potawatomi, not Navajo."

"The actor was Mohawk," Frank said. "So that means Mar'll scalp you twice, Joe."

"Aunt Gertrude says I need a haircut anyway," Joe said.

"I…kn-know…h-h-ow t-to…sp-speak Indian," Tina said, and held up a hand and screwed up her face like Big Chief in _Peter Pan._ "H-how! H-h-how!" She collapsed into more giggles.

Okay, probably not a good idea to let Mar hear this conversation…

"Make that three scalps," Frank said, grinning. "'How' is from a Sioux word. That's what the encyclopedia said. I looked it up," he added, when Kris looked at him.

"Indians have different languages?" Sharon said.

_Really_ not a good idea to let Mar hear this conversation. "Four scalps," Kris said, to Frank.

"The Navajo don't take scalps." Joe stuck his tongue out. "So there. We're safe."

"We most certainly did," Mar said, from the hallway, and that got a group _eep_ as everyone jumped; she and Aunt Gertrude carried cookie sheets for the first round of the Nativity figures, and helped set the figures carefully in place. But Mar eyed Joe speculatively. "If you behave, maybe I'll show you my collection later."

"Oh, heavens, Mar, don't give them any more ideas," Aunt Gertrude said, as they carried the cookie sheets back into the kitchen.

Silence.

"Does she really…?" Joe said in an awed voice, to Kris.

Kris schooled her face into her best Implacable-Indian-Warrior-Mar imitation and scowled at him, but Joe only grinned.

"H-h-how!" Tina said again, and made the Big Chief face back at Kris. "H-how!"

"Someone's going to get added to the collection, if you're not careful," Frank said.

"Anyway," Joe went on, to Kris, "Dad said he'll talk to my Secret Santa's mom and dad. Sharon told him, back in the garden room, but Dad won't tell us. He doesn't think it's that person."

"It's not," Sharon said, then blushed when Joe looked at her. But Sharon kept watching Kris.

Kris kept her gaze down. She and Mar were going to have to find some way to teach Sharon a little control in her Gift. "Here," Kris said, handing the crystal to Tina. "It's your Nativity scene, so it needs a pretty rock, right?"

Tina's face lit up. "W-we…c-c-can…p-p-put an-an angel on it!"

"We've got a couple bags of glitter," Frank said. "We made our own Christmas cards and had a lot left over. We could put that all over the angels. I'll go get it." He got up, then smacked Joe lightly on the head. "Don't forget to tell 'em about Bell Book and Candle."

"I didn't!" Joe protested, but Frank was already out the front door.

"Bell Book and Candle?" Sharon said.

Joe nodded. By the time Frank came back with the glitter (silvery, sparkly stuff he called 'diamond dust'), Joe had told them all about the mystery and what Mrs. Bell wanted, and then, unexpectedly…

"Mrs. Bell thinks it's the ghost," Frank said, as he handed the glittery bag to Tina. "So Joe asked if you could come along, too, Tag. You and Sharon, if you both want. Me and Joe'll look for the real thief, and you and Sharon can look for the ghost."

"What?" Kris said, unable to believe she'd heard that. _"You're_ asking me to look for a _ghost?"_

"Merry Christmas, Tag," Joe said, grinning.

"Me, too?" Sharon said, wide-eyed. "You mean it?"

"Uh-huh," Joe said. "Friday night, if your mom and dad say it's okay. Mrs. Bell said it wouldn't be right if it was just us and Tag, so I asked about you coming along, too, and she said okay, since your mom's a deacon and everything."

"That way we can cover upstairs and downstairs," Frank added.

"That big Book of Kells went missing," Joe said_._ "So I really want to find that."

"It did?" Kris stared at him. "But…it's _huge._ That couldn't have been the ghost. It couldn't have been."

Frank and Joe looked at each other. "Did I just hear you say something _couldn't_ be a ghost, Tag?" Joe said incredulously.

"She's right," Sharon said. "Ghosts can't manage stuff that big. If they do, you've got a bigger problem than ghosts."

"Of c-c-course it's…n-not a…gh-gh-ghost, s-s-s-silly J-J-Joe," Tina said. "It's…th-the b-brown…m-m-man. He l-likes p-p-pretty…st-st-stuff. S-s-silly, silly, s-silly…J-Joe."She giggled again.

Silence, except for Tina humming as she sprinkled glitter all over one of the angels.

From the looks on Frank's and Joe's faces, they hadn't expected that — and Kris looked down; it was too easy to pick up that Joe wasn't sure he believed Tina, either. Hopefully he wouldn't say it out loud.

"The brown man?" Frank said.

Tina nodded. "He…r-r-really l-likes…c-c-candy c-canes."

"What's he look like?" Joe said.

Tina looked at him, an obvious _I-just-told-you._ "B-b-brown, s-s-silly."

Joe's expression…now Kris giggled, Sharon with her.

"Yeah, silly Joe," Frank said, grinning. "Okay. A brown man who likes pretty stuff. He lives in the book store, Tina?"

Tina nodded. "M-Mommy! L-l-look! K-Kris g-g-gave m-me a…c-c-crystal…f-f-for m-my angel!"

Smiling, Mrs. Collins came into the living room. "Did you tell Kris thank you?"

"Th-thank…y-y-y-you, K-Kris," Tina said.

"You're welcome," Kris said, smiling; she'd been doing that a lot tonight. It didn't feel forced or weird, for a change. "I don't know how to get the angel onto it, though."

"Chet's into building models this week," Joe said. "His latest craze. Maybe he'll know. He was going on about some special new glue."

"Loc-tite," Frank said. "We should've had him come over to build the stable for us."

Joe snorted. "Are you kidding? He would've made it out of cookies, and then eaten it before we had Baby Jesus done."

"St-stables…aren't c-c-cookies…s-s-silly J-J-oe," Tina giggled, and Joe rolled his eyes.

Mrs. Collins sat down cross-legged next to her daughter, looking over the various Nativity scene pieces. "I heard you asking about the brown man."

"Mrs. Bell asked me and Frank to solve a mystery for her," Joe said proudly. "She's got stuff disappearing."

"Oh." Mrs. Collins looked at Tina. "Well…the brown man isn't the one doing it. I wouldn't worry about him."

"Is t-t-to! H-he…l-l-likes…Chr-Chr-Christmas st-stuff!"

"It's a little elf that Tina says she sees every time we go to the bookstore," Mrs. Collins said to Joe and Frank.

Kris went still. She hadn't heard that. She couldn't have heard that.

"She says she gives him her candy canes." Mrs. Collins was smiling again. "And he gives her Christmas ornaments in return. She always has an ornament with her whenever we leave — Mrs. Bell knows about that, and she always gives Tina extra candy canes for the elf." She touched her daughter's nose, and Tina giggled. "I think someone's just pretending to get more candy."

"Where's he live, Tina?" Kris said, trying to sound casual. "I mean…like…upstairs? Behind the counter?"

"Th-the k-k-kids…r-room. H-he l-likes…D-d-doctor S-Seuss…t-t-too. F-f-fox…in…S-s-socks."

The kids' section was in the basement, which Mrs. Bell had refurbished into a comfortable, colorful reading space, complete with bean-bags and reading "cubbyholes" shaped like trees and rabbit-burrows. Kris and Sharon looked at each other — Kris had told Sharon about what had happened last Christmas, with Kris, Frank and Joe getting kidnapped by the Sidhe, though Frank and Joe didn't remember that part, thanks to the Sidhe curse.

So maybe Bell Book and Candle had a brownie living in it…?

But Frank and Joe were looking at each other again, and oddly, they didn't look like they disbelieved Tina; Frank looked thoughtful.

"Anyway," Mrs. Collins said, "we have a doctor's appointment early tomorrow, before school, so we'll have to leave, Tina."

"Sharon," Dr. Anderson said, as he and Mrs. Anderson came into the living room, "we have to go, too. Since I'm the doctor in question."

"B-but…we…we're st-still m-making…ang-angels!" Tina's face fell, and she looked like she was going to cry.

"Everything still has to bake," Kris said, still watching Frank and Joe and wondering. "So we wouldn't finish it all tonight anyway, Tina. I'll bring 'em over to your house tomorrow, okay?"

"You can come back later to finish it, Tina," Mrs. Collins said, smiling. "Or everyone can come over our place, for a change."

"If it means I'll get to hear Joe called 'silly' all night, we'll be there," Frank said, grinning, and went with Kris and Joe upstairs to get all the coats.

"Make sure you ask your mom and dad about Friday," Kris whispered to Sharon, as everyone was saying goodbyes at the door.

Sharon bit her lip, glanced at her parents, who were laughing over some joke on the front porch. "Don't say anything about ghosts," she whispered back, "or they'll say no." But then she smiled. "You're really lucky, having Joe for a big brother. I can't wait to tell you how lucky."

And with that little bit of mystery, Sharon ran to catch up with her parents.


	10. Connections

_**A/N: Don't worry, I haven't forgotten this tale, and thanks for the reviews and follows, everyone! "We're a Couple of Misfits", lyrics by J. Marks, from the Rankin & Bass animated "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".** _

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Joe hadn't felt this light and bouncy in a while, especially not at Christmas. The next day, he walked with Kris to her Special Ed math class, just to give Tina the snowman tin filled with Aunt Gertrude's cookies, while Kris gave Tina one of the finished salt-dough angels ("and I'll bring the rest over after school, okay?"). When he left, Tina was sharing the cookies with everyone else in the trailer and chattering about the green cow that "s-s-silly J-Joe" had done for her Nativity scene.

Joe also made a point of checking on the other retarded kid, Danny, to make sure he wasn't being forgotten for Secret Santa, even though Danny was in eighth grade. But Danny had a funny little elf-ornament strung on his wheelchair; Joe saw a "From Santa" tag, so he was probably okay. Still, he'd ask around; Callie might know who it was. It couldn't hurt.

Joe barely made it to math class ahead of the bell, scowling at the empty seat next to him where Kris usually sat. Mr. Gregory hadn't wasted any time getting Kris into remedial math, that was infuriatingly obvious. Kris wasn't _that_ bad at math. She'd been behind, but Frank had been helping her, and she'd been catching up. True, she was slow, but the kids flunking this class were still here, so that shouldn't have been a problem.

"What's the matter, Joe, missing your little dummy girlfriend?" Angie said behind him, as others laughed.

That did it. "What's the matter, Angie, you can't find any more little kids to ruin Christmas for?" Joe snapped.

Of course, right at that moment, Mr. Gregory walked into the classroom. "Mr. Hardy," he said, "keep your girlfriend troubles out of my classroom. Page sixty-eight, problems one through four, on the board, please. Volunteers for problem five?"

Just great. But Joe didn't care. He scratched the problems out — correctly — in record time and flopped back down at his desk, ignoring Mr. Gregory's glare. Joe managed to keep his attention on the lesson the rest of the class, but after the bell rang, Tony Prito caught him just outside the room.

"Wow, Joe — keep razzing cheerleaders like that, you'll never get a girlfriend. What happened?"

Joe gave him a _look._ Boy-girl stuff was bad enough without adding Angie into it, but lately Tony had been finding it fascinating. He was one of Joe's and Frank's friends, a cheerful dark-haired boy. Joe glanced; Angie was still in the math classroom, chattering with Lisa, and the other kids were pushing past him and Tony…but a few others had stopped close by, obviously listening in.

Fine. "You know that poor little retarded kid, Tina?" Joe didn't bother to keep his voice down. He wanted everyone to hear this. "Angie told her she wasn't going to get anything for Secret Santa — Angie told her to her face that she wasn't going to waste money on a 'retard'."

Tony blinked. "She did _what? _ You sure?"

"Ask Miss Hawkins," Joe said fiercely. There, let 'em try to call a teacher a liar! "She was there. Tina was crying in Special Ed yesterday. Angie's ruining Christmas for that poor kid."

Now Tony was scowling — his baby sister had been brain-damaged at birth, and Tony was real over-protective of her. "But Tina can't help she was born like that. I see her all the time when Mama takes Ana in for speech therapy."

"Tell me about it." Joe started walking towards his locker. "So me and Frank are adopting her. Kris and Sharon, too. We're all gonna be her Secret Santa."

"I want in, too." Tony scuffed at the floor. "But I don't have much allowance."

"Make her cookies or something. Tina told us all she wanted for Christmas was pretty rocks." Joe snorted. "Yeah, like that's a real waste of money for poor rich Angie — rocks."

Joe pulled open his locker door, and stopped. Another gift sat on the shelf, different wrapping paper than the last one (red foil-paper with green holly), with the tag handwritten in fancy, curly script: "From Santa".

Dad hadn't had a chance to get new locks yet. Joe stared at the present, then grabbed it and tucked it in his book-bag; it rattled a little. It'd wait until he got home, so Dad could see it.

English class was boring and fidgety, as usual, even though Miss Hawkins had them reading "A Christmas Carol", so Joe went outside for morning recess, despite the cold, and promptly got into a snowball fight with all the rest of the boys and a couple girls who'd dared brave the cold. The gym teacher, Mr. Kennedy, took one look at his red-cheeked, snow-soaked class and decided to warm them up with dodge ball. Angie was in the same gym period, and Joe made certain he was on the other team with Tony. They both targeted her over and over, something the rest of their team picked up on — though they didn't know why — and gleefully turned the dodgeball game into "kill the cheerleaders".

"Joe, stop it!" Angie whined, after the tenth hit. "You're breaking the rules! Mr. Kennedy!"

"It's dodgeball, Thompson," Mr. Kennedy said. "That's the point. Dodge it."

Joe grinned; so Angie couldn't take what she was dishing out. In science class, Tony claimed the seat right next to him and high-fived him. Sharon and Kris took the seats right behind them, for a change, which meant that there were now four people group-glaring over at Angie. Joe couldn't help noticing that Iola sat next to Angie.

"Look, what is your problem, little boy?" Angie said to Joe, and the girls with her giggled.

"We don't like snotty rich girls who ruin Christmas for little kids," Tony said loudly, and the entire classroom went silent.

"Especially when the little kid only wants pretty rocks," Joe added. "What's the matter, Angie, your daddy can't afford a _rock?"_

Kris was staring at them, as if Joe and Tony had grown extra heads. Next to Angie, Iola looked upset, as if she was about to cry.

"She spends it all on lip gloss," Sharon piped up. "That's why she smells like cheap bubblegum all the time."

Angie rolled her eyes. "Whatever, weirdos." She went back to whispering furiously with her friends; Iola was scowling towards Joe.

Then Mr. Mack came in, and raised an eyebrow at seeing Joe's neighbors. "Just for the record, girls, if you're going to copy off Joe, make sure you correct his spelling, okay? I go through too many red pencils as is."

The class laughed, and settled into Santa's compost problem from yesterday.

"Joe told me about Tina," Tony said to Kris, after the bell rang and they were clumped in the hall, by Joe's locker. "Maybe you should talk to Iola or Chet, see if they'd invite Tina to the party on Saturday, too."

Kris stopped.

"Party?" Sharon said.

"I'm not going," Kris said, at the same time, turning red. "I'm…um…busy."

That was news to Joe — Frank had told him about the birthday cake that Chet's mom planned, and Kris hadn't said anything to him and Frank about not going. What had happened? Joe pulled his Scooby-Doo lunchbox out of his locker. "Busy? But you were looking forward to it last week."

"I said I'm busy!" Kris snapped, and Joe recoiled. Kris pulled her locker open, and stared. "Joe. There's two gifts in here."

Oh no. Joe looked. Neither of them matched the wrapping paper of the one he had stashed in his book-bag at the moment, but one did match the wrapping paper for the Old Spice. He glanced at Sharon, who was biting her lip.

"Don't open the green one," Joe said quietly. "That's what the Old Spice was wrapped in. I think the blue one's safe…" He glanced again at Sharon, who nodded behind Kris's back, "yeah. It should be safe. Want me to keep the other one in my bag? We'll let Dad open it."

Staring at the gifts, Kris was trembling.

"Tag," Joe said. "I'm here. So's Tony and Sharon. It's just Angie being rotten. Let me take it."

"But it wasn't there this morning!" Kris almost wailed. "And you and Frank were with me, so you know it wasn't…and…"

"I know." Joe looked over her lock, the door, the hinges, and the ventilation slots. Nothing looked forced, no scratches, nothing bent or broken. "Look, I know who your Santa is, okay? I'll ask them if it was in there when they dropped their gift off." Behind Kris, Sharon shook her head.

"I'm getting real sick of Angie's crap," Tony muttered. "'Specially her pulling nasty tricks at _Christmas."_

Sharon was scribbling something in a notebook. Kris let Joe take the green-wrapped gift, took the blue one for herself and grabbed her Monkees lunchbox. Head down, she hurried down the hall towards the cafeteria, wiping at her face.

Joe caught up. "Hey, Tag. C'mon. Your Santa wouldn't do anything mean like that. I know they wouldn't. They're really nice."

Sharon had also caught up, showed Joe her notebook where Kris couldn't see. _Right after homeroom,_ it read. _Not there._

Okay, that narrowed it down some. But the halls were crowded in between classes, and Joe and Kris had somewhat different class schedules; the person pulling this was taking a big risk in getting seen.

"I'm okay," Kris muttered. "Really. I'll be okay."

"You don't sound it," Sharon said bluntly.

"Tag, c'mon," Joe said. "Like my dad says, you can't let them get to you. That's what they want."

"Easy for you to say," Sharon said.

"It's the truth. Bullies look for easy victims. You act like one, they'll jump all over you."

At that, Sharon stopped in the middle of the hallway, faced him. "Try being on this end sometime, Joe Hardy. You're popular. You're an 'in'. You parrot that stupid 'don't let it get to you', and all you're really doing is blaming _us_ for getting hurt. Like we're at fault because we dare _show_ it because, oh my gosh, you might have to do something about it."

"Sharon," Kris whispered, "don't."

"I _do_ do something about it," Joe shot back. Next to him, Tony shifted, plainly uncomfortable. "Ask Tag. Me and Frank help her, we're helping Tina —"

"Yeah, you're a real hero." Sharon shook Kris off, glared at Joe. "I bet you would've totally ignored Tina if Kris hadn't told you about it."

"Because I didn't know her Secret Santa was like that!"

"I'd love to live in your world," Sharon said scornfully. "People are _always '_like that'. You've never had a whole class laughing at you behind your back just because they think you're weird, or tripping you, or stealing your stuff. You ignore them, they just get _worse_. So yeah, I _let it get to me."_

Joe stared as she walked off. What had he said? He was only trying to help.

"Wow," Tony said. "What put the bee up her butt?"

"What she said." Kris sniffled, wiped at her face again. "You get so used to people being mean, so when they're nice, you think it's a trick…" Her voice faltered; she looked down when Tony and Joe looked at her. "Sorry."

"No, Tag, _I'm_ sorry," Joe said quietly. "It's just hard, thinking like that."

"Because you're a nice person, Joe." Kris looked at him, solemn, serious. "You and Frank are showing me not all people are mean. Like Mar did, and the folks that helped me after…after I ran away." She looked away again.

"Maybe if Sharon wasn't so weird," Tony said, "people would like her more."

"That's it." Anger rose in Kris's voice. "That's exactly what she's talking about. Why's being weird an excuse to be _mean?_ You don't have to like us, but you don't have to be mean about it. I mean, Rudolph was weird and everyone thinks he's cute."

"_We're a couple of mis-fits,"_ Joe sang under his breath, and suddenly Kris giggled and started singing along, off-key and out-of-time, as they walked to the cafeteria. _"What's the matter with misfits, that's where we fit in…"_

"You guys are weird," Tony said, grinning. "That's Ana's favorite song. She loves Rudolph."

"Thanks, big brother," Kris said, to Joe. Then, shyly, "You really do have a nice singing voice."

Then she ran off after Sharon.

Joe spotted Frank sitting with Chet and Phil, and made his way over, Tony at his heels. "Tag got a hate-gift," Joe said to his brother as he sat down. "Same person, I think."

Frank looked up. "Oh no."

Joe brought the wrapped box out, set on the table between them. "I'm going to let Dad open it."

"Good idea," Frank said. "Anyone see anything?"

Looking around to make sure Kris wasn't near, Joe shook his head. "Sharon put her gift in right after homeroom. She said it wasn't there then."

"Huh." Frank touched the box with a tentative finger. "You?"

"Yeah, I got something, too, but I don't think it's the same." Joe brought the other box out.

"Put that one up." Frank pushed the green-wrapped box back towards Joe, and Joe shoved it back in his bag. "Keep it with you. I wouldn't put it past whoever did this to try to take it back, if they realize Dad's on their tail." He chewed on his bologna sandwich thoughtfully. "There's something about that wrapping paper. I've seen it before."

"Hate gift?" Chet said; he was a roly-poly boy, with brown curly hair and glasses.

Frank and Joe looked at each other, then Joe told Chet, Phil, and Tony about yesterday's gift in his locker and the message with it.

"That wasn't from your Santa," Chet said.

"How do you know?" Joe said.

"I…uh…overheard them talking." Chet's face turned beet-red. "Go on, open that one. It's okay."

Joe eyed Chet, a horrible suspicion forming in his head. Not that it would be any surprise, the way Iola had been trying to get his name from whoever had it, but still, Chet should've been a good friend and told Joe, instead of the Apocalypse just dropping down on his head out of nowhere.

Frank glanced at Chet, and grinned. "Yeah, Joe. Go on, open it."

Great. Just great. Joe was never going to hear the end of it, if it was something mushy-girl-ish like chocolates or flowers or hearts. Joe sighed and carefully undid the wrapping paper; if he didn't rip it, he could use it again for Tina. Something glittery like this would be a huge hit.

"You know I don't like your tagalong," Phil said around a mouthful of peanut butter. "But that's just above and beyond mean. Especially with Tina. Do you know if Kris has any more trailer classes today?"

That was unexpected. "No. She only takes math and English out there. But she's got math first period, if that helps." But then Joe got the paper undone without a single rip, and sat back. A black box, bright orange lettering: _The Amazing Aladdin's Cup And Balls Trick!_

Frank burst out laughing.

Joe opened the box, just to make sure it really was the trick and not some nasty surprise, but there, three red plastic cups and four fake plastic walnuts, with the little instruction booklet in three languages (English, French, and Chinese, of all things). It was one of the cheap kid's kits the Houdini Store in Boston sold, but now Joe was grinning, his heart rising. So his Secret Santa wasn't bad, after all.

"Looks like Tag took you seriously about learning magic," Frank said, as Phil got up and headed over to where Kris and Sharon were sitting.

"It's not her," Joe said; Chet was smothering a grin. "She's got Sharon." Joe looked over to where Phil was talking with Kris, and saw Phil pass a couple large candy canes to her; Kris looked surprised.

Phil came back, saw the others looking at him. "Stop it, guys. My folks pitch a fit if I bring home any of the Santa stuff. Better for your tagalong to give Tina those candy canes than for me to sit through another lecture on why we don't celebrate Christmas."

"That really sucks, Phil," Frank said.

"It's worse, since we're in the middle of Hanukah right now," Phil said morosely, then looked thoughtful. "You know…I could use that to get Tina something. We have tons of Hanukah _gelt_ right now."

"_Gelt?"_ Joe said.

"Those gold chocolate coins," Phil said. "We use 'em to play _dreidl_. It's some custom about giving money to kids."

"Your parents can give me money any day," Chet said. "I won't complain, no matter what holiday it is."

"You'd be a Hidden Hanukah Herald," Joe said to Phil, "instead of Secret Santa."

Phil aimed a mock-slap at Joe's head; Joe ducked. "How about I drag you in for one of those lectures? I'd be taking Jesus's name in vain all through it, if we believed in Jesus. Which we don't, as I've been told over and over."

"You could still do it," Frank said. "You just wouldn't get in trouble for it."

"Wanna bet?" Phil said.

The last two periods flew by; today was music period, instead of art, and fat Mrs. Callahan (in one of her usual colorful mu-mu's, a gaudy red-and-green poinsettia-pattern with gold sprinkles) was having them learn the songs for the school Christmas program. All through "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", Joe kept catching Kris's eye; watching her try to keep a straight face was wonderful. But finally, it was over and they were free, and…and…Joe sighed, trudged down the stairs. It was only Tuesday, after all. Solving the bookstore mystery wasn't until Friday, almost a whole week away, still.

"Cheer up," Frank said, after Joe had been grousing for several minutes. "Aunt Gertrude was getting the Christmas ornaments out of the attic this morning, so we're decorating the tree tonight."

"We're doing that, too," Kris said. "So it's ready for Charlie tomorrow. Mar'll be up at Logan first thing tomorrow morning to pick him up."

"They ought to let you out of school so you can go with her," Joe said.

Kris made a face. "They'd probably add another trailer class, if I did that."

"Probably. Need help taking the Nativity stuff to Tina?" Joe turned his face up; snow was falling thick and heavy again — if they were lucky, maybe they'd get a blizzard a couple days right before break, and get snow days.

"_Shimá_'s driving me over," Kris said. "Mrs. Collins invited us over for dinner, but _Shimá _turned her down tonight, because of getting ready for Charlie. I think they're coming back over Thursday night, though, so we can finish it."

"Who's that?" Frank said.

In the middle of the Mountainhawk's yard stood a big snowman — which hadn't been there that morning — and a weathered, craggy mountain of a man was slapping more snow onto it.

All three halted in the middle of the sidewalk, and finally, the man noticed he had an audience. He crossed his arms, and stood eyeing them with an impassive face.

Enlightenment dawned. "You're Charlie!" Joe said, awed. The man looked like a real Indian warrior, even though he was in a khaki-green coat and jeans, not feathers and paint.

The man raised an eyebrow. "I could've sworn Mama said you were a girl, _shi deezhí,_ but maybe I misheard."

"Um…I'm not…I mean, she is," Joe said.

Frank nudged Kris forward. "I think that's your new brother."

Kris's eyes were round, staring up. "You're _big!"_

The man burst out laughing. Then Mar came out onto the porch, saw the three, and smiled. "Come on over, kids_._ Kris, this is your brother, Charlie. To you, he's '_shinaái'._ Charlie, the two boys are Frank and Joe Hardy, our next door neighbors."

"We're her…shi…shi…_shinaái,_ too," Joe said proudly. He hadn't even had to ask Mar to repeat it. _"Yá'át'ééh."_ That meant "hello" in Navajo; Mar had assured him his pronunciation was good, for a non-Navajo.

"_Yá'át'ééh," _Frank echoed, a half beat behind Joe. "I'm Frank, that's Joe."

Charlie raised an eyebrow again. "Settlers bothering to learn the tongue of the Holy People? The world'll end."

"You just said you were Kris's 'my older brother'," Mar said, smiling, to Joe. "For third person like that, use _ánaaí. _Frank would be _shinaái_ to you. And before you ask," Mar went on, to Frank, "you would call Joe _shi tsíłí_."

"Even she said 'silly Joe'," Frank said, and ducked Joe's mock punch.

Kris still hadn't spoken, staring wide-eyed at Charlie.

"She's shy," Joe said to Charlie, as Frank nudged Kris again.

"_Yá'át'ééh, shik'is,"_ Charlie said solemnly, coming to loose attention and looking down at the three from his full height, then spoke a long string of formal-sounding Navajo.

Now Mar burst out laughing. "You've done it now, my son. Joe'll stick to you like a thistle-burr."

"Um," Joe said, looking from Kris to Mar and back to Charlie. "I'm not that good. I only know a few words."

But Frank had been listening with his head cocked. "I think…were you telling us what your clans are? I heard Mar's clan in that."

Charlie grinned. "Good ears, kiddo. That's more than most white folks catch. Okay, in English…'Hello, my friends! I'm Charlie Mountainhawk. I'm from the Near Mountain clan, I am born for the Chiricahua Apache, my maternal grandpa is from the Big Medicine people, and my paternal grandpa is also from the Chiricahua Apache. That is how I am a man." He squatted down to eye-level for Kris. "Do you have a hello for me, my new little sister?"

"They're still debating whether to let her claim Near Mountain," Mar said dryly. "One of us Injuns, adopting a settlers' kid and the white courts agreeing to it? Tribal Council had a collective conniption."

"_Yá'át'ééh, Shinaái,"_ Kris whispered.

"There you go," Charlie said, grinning. "Don't worry, I don't bite."

"We don't have clans like that," Joe said, to Charlie. "I mean, we're Irish and Scottish, and Gramma Kelly says we come from the old kings, but I don't have all that stuff memorized."

"Everyone should know where they're from," Charlie said. "Otherwise, how do you know where you're going?"

Joe eyed him suspiciously. That didn't sound Indian. That sounded like a quote from one of the classics that Mom had loved reading.

"But I thought you weren't coming until tomorrow!" Kris said.

"I got lucky. They found room on an earlier flight. I didn't have time to call, or I would've let you know sooner."

"Boys, go get your stuff put up," Mar said. "It's too cold for us to stand out here like this."

"Yeah," Frank said, with an exaggerated sigh, "I guess you savage Injuns can't handle the snow like us Hardy white folks can…_hey!"_

Charlie nailed him square in the chest with a snowball. Soon all three book bags were dumped on the shoveled-off porch; the battle ranged all over the front yard, and Charlie's aim was _killer._

But, finally, it was Aunt Gertrude who called a halt, after coming out to see what all the noise was…and returned Charlie's sneak-attack snowball (Charlie yelling a war-cry that was a dead-on Tarzan imitation) with a dead-center-chest one of her own.

"Wow," Charlie said, brushing snow off, "the settlers' women are even tougher than the menfolk. Now I'm really impressed."

"You can kidnap her, if you want," Joe offered. "We won't mind."

"Homework," Aunt Gertrude said firmly, to Frank and Joe. "Mar, I know you got interrupted to go get your young hooligan there. Would you and your family like to come over for dinner? It's pot roast and mashed potatoes."

"Definitely, Gert, and thank you," Mar said. "I got corn bread done, at least, so we won't eat you out of house and home."

"Pot roast? And Mama's corn bread?" Charlie looked towards the sky. "Okay, I believe in the white heaven now. Satisfied?"

"Your brother's _cool,_" Frank whispered to Kris, as they got their book bags from the porch.

The invitation resulted in Kris bringing her books over, and Frank helping her with math; all three of them were lying in front of the fireplace, and Dad had thrown in several cinnamon pinecones, so the house smelled of cinnamon, pot roast, and corn-bread. Joe could barely concentrate on his homework, what little there was of it. But when he was shoving his textbooks back into the book bag, he saw the green-wrapped packaged; he'd forgotten about it, with all the excitement over Charlie. He took it downstairs — the adults were in the kitchen, talking over coffee, Charlie shaking his head over the latest news reports from Vietnam.

Kris had seen the package, had gone pale, but Joe set it down on the table, in front of Dad and Mar. "Kris got this in her locker today, right before lunch. It's the same wrapping paper as the other one."

Dad sat back, frowning; a serious look went around the adults, including Charlie — Mar must've told him about the other one.

"I already talked to…to her Santa," Joe went on, "and they said it wasn't there when they left their gift, after homeroom. And they didn't see anyone. The locker hinges weren't forced, Dad — I didn't see any scratch marks or bent metal, either."

"I checked, too," Frank added. "Nothing."

"What'd you get for your Santa gift, squirrel?" Mar said.

Kris mumbled something at the floor, then ran back out to the living room, coming back with a little white box filled with cotton. Inside, a small blown-glass dragon, wings tinted red and gold leaf tipping its horns.

"Oh, that's lovely," Aunt Gertrude said.

"I'd say your Santa likes being nice to you," Mar said, and Kris turned red.

Dad frowned at the green-wrapped package, then went downstairs and came back up with a pair of latex gloves, a large handkerchief, and the X-acto knife. He handed it all to Joe. "Here. Go ahead."

Dad trusted him to do it? For a moment, Joe was caught by surprise and delight. Then he shook himself, and carefully opened the gift with the knife, using the blade to cut away at the tape with minimal damage to the paper and potential fingerprints.

"I checked with Joe's Secret Santa and their parents," Dad said to Mar. "Most definitely not that person."

Mar glanced at Kris. "I figured."

Frank had come over to watch closely as Joe worked on the paper. "Wow," Frank breathed, as the paper fell away from the box. "That's weird."

"Frank?" Dad said.

"That's a gift box from Peterson's Cafe," Frank said. "The place right next to Bell Book and Candle."


End file.
